Product Review: Urban Moonshine Organic Bitters

By Sherrie Gulmahamad on December 1st, 2009

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This is going to make me sound extremely lazy, but I’ve never been much of a cocktail girl because of the inherent fussiness of making one.  I’m not talking about your easier drinks: an elegant Greyhound, the comforting simplicity of a stiff rum and coke, the bottomless screwdriver I loved in college – I’m capable of pulling those off.  No, I’m talking about the mixology craze with the special implements, the mashing, the muddling, the splashing, the hand cracked ice. What? Yes. For a Sazerac. Drinks like that are better left up to the experts, some kind of legion of sexy bartenders.  Still, I was willing to brave these alcoholic waters to review Urban Moonshine’s Organic Bitters. Turns out you can have a cocktail AND do something good for yourself.

Bitters have traditionally been used as a digestif, a little concoction you could drink after a heavy meal to ease digestion.  They are herbal in nature; Urban Moonshine’s versions contain things like dandelion root (improves liver function), burdock root (battles skin eruptions like psoriasis and eczema), and fennel seed (prevents indigestion). This means you don’t even have to make yourself a cocktail to enjoy the benefits of bitters. You can drop a little into some sparkling mineral water after a gargantuan meal (say, after my personal favorite, Korean BBQ!) to help avoid that bloated over-full sensation.

Or, better yet, you could yank that icy cold bottle of vodka out of the freezer and whip up a cocktail. I took the liberty of making a few rounds of the “Urban Moonshine Cocktail”.  Simply put, a healthy squeeze of fresh lemon and lime, a hefty shot of vodka, some ginger ale, and 5 dashes of their Urban Moonshine Bitters.  I was also supposed to muddle up some fresh ginger in it, but remember, I’m allergic to personal muddling.  In order to write *a truly scientific* blog post, we had several rounds of these, and eventually declared them a success, right before our boozy bedtime.  To the bitters’ credit, I had no irritable stomach problems the next morning, although I was mildly hungover, no fault of the product.  While science chases that great challenge, the cure for the common hangover, I will have a few more of these cocktails, of course – to enjoy the health benefits.