Avery and Janet Glasser, and a chocolate-and-spice first attempt.

Bittermens began with a couple and an invitation. English Wikipedia, citing the San Francisco Chronicle, says that in 2007 Avery and Janet Glasser, then living in San Francisco, were invited to a bitters-making event at the city’s 209 Distillery. Avery Glasser’s speaker biography for the Tales of the Cocktail festival in 2015 says his first attempt at a flavour combination there became what is now Xocolatl Mole Bitters, a chocolate-and-spice bitters, and that he and Janet founded the company to create new combinations of flavours for bitters.

Bartenders in San Francisco, New York and Boston liked the results, English Wikipedia says, and the Glassers began registering as a manufacturer of non-beverage alcohol products with the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau — the federal regulator. In 2010, after obtaining federal and state permits, they began production in a shared commercial kitchen in Somerville, Massachusetts, English Wikipedia says, citing the Boston magazine Stuff.

The company then moved repeatedly. English Wikipedia, citing The Village Voice in February 2011, says Bittermens moved to Brooklyn in 2011, and, citing the New Orleans Times-Picayune in January 2013, that it moved its operations to Greater New Orleans in 2013. The company’s own website in 2014 named Greater New Orleans as its base from February 2013 and described its bitters as “handcrafted since 2007.” Avery Glasser’s 2015 festival biography described the move as bringing bitters production back to Louisiana after Peychaud’s production had moved to Kentucky. English Wikipedia says the company moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2016, and The Spirits Business called it Portland-based in March 2017, while the Australian trade title The Shout called New Orleans its permanent base in July 2017.

Mole, hops, tiki spice and a growing family of bitter liqueurs.

Bittermens’ range is built on named flavours. English Wikipedia dates Xocolatl Mole and Hopped Grapefruit to 2007, ’Elemakule Tiki, with allspice, cinnamon, clove and citrus, and Boston Bittahs, with citrus and chamomile, to 2008, and Burlesque Bitters, with açaí, rosehips, hibiscus and long pepper, to 2011. The same year brought products that were not strictly bitters, among them an Orange Cream Citrate and two vinegar-based shrubs, celery and habanero.

The Glassers widened the business into spirits. Avery Glasser’s festival biography says he launched Bittermens Spirits in 2011 with Mayur Subbarao to reinterpret classic bitter liqueurs, and that he left his day job later that year to work on the brands full time. In January 2012 Massachusetts Beverage Business listed its range: Amère Nouvelle, an Alsatian-style bitter orange liqueur; Amère Sauvage, an Alpine-style gentian liqueur; Citron Sauvage, a bitter grapefruit liqueur; and Commonwealth, a tonic cordial, sold in 375 ml bottles. The 2015 biography adds Vendetta Spirits, an importer launched in 2013, and DALA Spirits, an Icelandic company the couple formed in 2015 for a line of New Nordic spirits; English Wikipedia says the first of those, Bäska Snaps, a Swedish-style bitter schnapps made with distilled wormwood, appeared in 2012, and that a line of Speed Craft cocktail syrups followed in 2015.

The website kept pace. By 2019 bittermens.com, archived by the Wayback Machine, carried the strapline “Because Modifiers Matter” and grouped its products into bitters and extracts, syrups, liqueurs and the DALA spirits, with a page of bottle and label images for the press.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all cocktail-bitters names: Peychaud’s, Fee Brothers, Regans’, Bittermens, Scrappy’s, The Bitter Truth and Bob’s Bitters. Cocktail bitters are concentrated flavourings, usually made by steeping herbs, spices, roots, peels or other ingredients in alcohol, and they are used a few dashes or drops at a time to season a drink rather than as a drink in their own right.

That small dose shapes how a bitters brand looks. The product is sold in a small bottle, often fitted with a dasher top or a dropper, so the label has to carry a name, a flavour and a maker in very little space, and the same bottle may sit on a bar back, a shop shelf or a kitchen counter. The brands here range from names with long histories to small makers started in this century, and some now belong to much larger drinks companies while others are still run by the people who founded them.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded the brand and when, who owns it now, where its bitters are made and how its labels and packaging have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A craft brand with Sazerac behind it.

On 3 March 2017 the Sazerac Company of New Orleans announced that it had bought what it called a strategic interest in Bittermens; English Wikipedia describes it as a “significant interest.” The Spirits Business reported on 6 March 2017 that the price and the size of the stake were not disclosed, that Avery and Janet Glasser would continue to run the business, and that Sazerac would manage the sales, marketing and distribution of all Bittermens brands. Sazerac’s president and chief executive, Mark Brown, called it “a natural fit,” the magazine reported, and Avery Glasser said Sazerac’s corporate culture “so perfectly complements” the couple’s own. In July 2017 The Shout reported that Australian distribution of Bittermens had moved to SouthTrade International, a Sazerac company, as a result of the change in ownership.

The connection is now plain online. In 2022 the Bittermens website still carried a copyright notice in the name of Bittermens LLC, but by mid-2025 the address led to Sazerac’s own New Orleans shop, which described Peychaud’s and Bittermens bitters as “proudly part of the Sazerac family”; in October 2026 bittermens.com redirected to a page on sazerac.com that lists Bittermens among Sazerac’s brands and shows its Xocolatl Mole Bitters. That puts Bittermens on the same shelf as Peychaud’s and Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6, both sold by Sazerac.

The name needs a little care. It is written as one word, Bittermens, with no apostrophe.

For a design guide, Bittermens shows how a craft maker can build a range out of flavour names — Xocolatl Mole, ’Elemakule Tiki, Boston Bittahs — rather than a single heritage label, and how a small brand can keep its name after joining a larger group. Compare Angostura, the 1824 bitters with the oversized label, and Fee Brothers, another American bitters name. For this guide we use cacao, grapefruit and kraft with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Bittermens’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.