Even the most enthusiastic hobby mixologists and home chefs might not think about extending their curiosity for ingredients to their bar carts. But crafting your own bar staples is as challenging, educational and rewarding as, say, making your own sourdough or kimchi. You can explore your favorite flavors and discover new ones, deepen your grasp on how certain ingredients work with others, invent your own updates and end up with something all the more satisfying to sip. For newbie DIY-ers in the bar space, amaro is a great place to start — and to keep revisiting as you hone your skills.
“It’s a really cool thing, and it’s also not the hardest thing to do,” says Kate Williams, bar director at Nostrana in Portland, Oregon. “It’s not a huge space-taker, either, so even if you’re in a sweet little apartment, it’s something that you could have a really good time doing.”
Plus, homemade amaro offers a world of infinite ingredient possibilities and learning opportunities. The finished result is one that can be savored alone or used in an endless list of cocktails.
“It’s something you crafted that’s unique to you,” says Jon O’Connor, cofounder of Long Road Distillers in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “There are no rules, really, it’s just about what you like.”
Especially as you practice batch after batch, you can dial-in on certain flavor profiles you’re after. O’Connor says whenever they have an idea for a new cocktail at one of Long Road’s tasting rooms and can’t figure out how to achieve a certain flavor, they start building tinctures on specific ingredients. It’s the same approach you can take to amaro.
“Making your own amaro forces you to really understand what goes into it,” says Mickey Stevenson, lead bartender at Four Walls in Nashville, Tennessee. “Why certain bittering agents work the way they do, how botanicals interact and how sweetness balances everything out — it’s hand-on learning. Once you start playing with it, you’ll also get better at using different amari in cocktails because you’ll have a deeper understanding of what makes them tick.”
Like O’Connor, Stevenson emphasizes the appeal of being able to pursue specific flavors and customize the overall profile, whether you want something citrusy, spicy or more herbal.
Amaro 101
The diverging flavor paths in amaro are one of the first things to understand before trying your hand at a DIY project. “Amaro” means “bitter” in Italian, but there’s quite a range of levels under that bitterness umbrella. Originally made with medicinal purposes in mind, amari are herbal liqueurs. Any combination of botanicals, spices and citrus peels meets an alcoholic base (whether it’s a neutral spirit or neutral-spirit-plus-wine) and magic happens.
Fernet, the best known example being Fernet-Branca, is darker and more mouth-coating with medicinal, bitter, herbal, minty qualities. Alpine amari like Amaro Braulio are pine-y and can also be a bit minty and medicinal, while carciofo amari like Cynar, made with artichoke leaves, lean more vegetal. Cardamaro is wine-based and packed with spices, and Montenegro is fruity with chocolate and balsamic notes.
It’s best not to aim to make an exact replica of your go-to amaro because the category is notorious for lengthy proprietary ingredient lists; you could be setting yourself up for disappointment. But what you can do is get inspired by overall flavor routes: Do you want something citrusy and more balanced between bitter and sweet, or something minty and medicinal, or something spicy?
American Distillers Are Embracing the Art of Italian Amaro
From domestic fernets to citrus-forward aperitiviGetting Started: Your Ingredients
Before you get to the fun stuff, aka the botanicals, choose your alcohol.
“The base of anything matters to an incredible degree,” O’Connor says. “Better base product, better final product.” A neutral spirit like vodka is the easiest place to start, and it will leave all the flavor focus on your botanicals. Overproof rum is an option, too. Though as it will bring its own flavors, it may be best to try it once you’ve got a feel for how your other ingredients interact.
You’ll also need mason jars, several if possible. This is because it’s best to infuse your ingredients into the alcohol separately and blend at the end. “Barks and roots can take one to three weeks [for their flavors to extract], while citrus and spices only take about three to five days, and fresh herbs about 24 to 48 hours,” Stevenson says.
You can keep taste-testing as you go, which will give you control over your flavors and also help you see how they develop. In fact, O’Connor recommends background research, in which you isolate different ingredients by themselves and soak them in an ounce or two of alcohol.
“You’ll get a frame of reference for how they react in alcohol and what flavors they impart,” O’Connor says. You can build up from there, trying two or three ingredients together before tossing a bunch of stuff in a jar and hoping for the best.
When it comes to selecting your ingredients, not only can you think about what flavors you like but also potentially what’s around you.
“Amaro is deeply connected to region,” says Ektoras Binikos, co-founder of Atheras Spirits and Brooklyn’s Bitter Monk. The joint project was born during the lockdown days of the early pandemic, when Binikos and partner Simon Jutras started experimenting with making their own amari, bitters and liqueurs in the basement of their Harlem bar, Sugar Monk. Today, Atheras includes those categories in its bottle lineup, made with ingredients foraged both near New York City and Greece.
“It’s a lot about drawing inspiration from local flora and fauna, which offers a vast array of flavors,” Binikos says. “It’s important to pay attention to what’s around you. The practice of foraging, it can broaden your flavor palate.” If you can’t forage locally (and safely, with a firm grasp on what’s what and what’s edible), peruse nearby farmer’s markets and specialty shops for local botanicals. Failing that, a quick online search for particular ingredients will lead you to a supplier.
Crucially, especially for your first (and maybe second and third) homemade amaro, start small. “Don’t overcomplicate it,” Stevenson says. “Stick to five to seven ingredients at first before going wild.”
To help you get started, consider three different ingredient groups. “Begin with bittering ingredients like roots and barks,” Binikos says. This group includes gentian root, cinchona bark, orris root and angelica root. Wormwood is common, but Stevenson warns it might not be the most beginner-friendly ingredient, as it can quickly become overpowering.
The next building block, Binikos says, is aromatic spices — think cinnamon, star anise, clove, cardamom and lemongrass. Finally, there’s fresh herbs like mint and rosemary, as well as citrus peels. Williams advises a balanced approach to amounts, as they can also drown out other flavors if added in too large of quantities. In general, though, your ratios should be around 3:2:1, herbs/peels to spices to bitting agents.
Patience Is a Virtue
Creating your own amaro is not a project for someone who wants to use what they’re making within the same week but for someone who wants to grow their knowledge of ingredients, how they extract in alcohol and how they combine. During the course of a few weeks and working in aforementioned stages — start soaking those tougher barks and roots first, followed by citrus and spices, and finally fresh herbs — simply let your ingredients hang out in high-proof vodka (jars sealed and at room temperature), sampling them at regular intervals until they’re right where you want them.
When everything’s ready, you’ll want to strain your infused alcohol well. Stevenson recommends cheesecloth, and you can strain as you’re combining the liquids from different jars into one container. At this point, you can proof the amaro down.
“You want to get it down to an approachable ABV,” Williams says. “We all have different preferences. Some aperitivi and amari are super low, like 21%, and some are super hot. I think a nice 30% to 35% range keeps it very sippable. You can enjoy it neat or on a rock, and it serves a nice after-dinner purpose without overwhelming your palate. And it’s also strong enough that it can mix well into cocktails.”
To reach that range, it’s a good idea to keep your starting alcohol around 150-proof. When straining and blending your jars, dilute the mixture with water — start with a little at a time until you reach the balance of flavor and alcohol heat you’re after. Finally, sweetener will both help temper the alcohol and the bitterness. For two cups of 150-proof or 75% vodka, use two cups of simple syrup. But like every other ingredient in this process, Stevenson recommends starting with less because it’s easier to add more and impossible to subtract.
The sweetener is yet another flavor-manipulating opportunity. You can go with traditional simple syrup, one part sugar to one part water. Or you can go with demerara syrup, which Williams makes in a two-to-one (sugar-to-water) ratio. “It offers more of a viscous, molasses-like sweetness,” she says. To hit those different darker, rounder, even spicier notes, you can also try honey or maple syrup.
Enjoying Your Amaro and Continuing to Experiment
Even as you get better at choosing and using ingredients, the amaro-making process will never stop teaching you new things. Each batch offers the chance to zero in on certain elements you want.
“If you use x grams of neutral spirit and x grams of botanicals and the result was too bitter, next time you can dial certain ingredients back,” O’Connor says. Track your batches and what you found from each one to build a system in which you can continue to explore new flavor profiles and perfect the ones you love.
For research, O’Connor recommends The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs, in which tons of individual ingredients are broken down with what pairs well with them; Williams suggests Mark Bitterman’s Field Guide to Bitters and Amari and Brad Thomas Parsons’s Amaro.
Make sure to enjoy your amaro neat so you can really dive into the aroma, flavor and mouthfeel. This is Binikos’s preferred way of sipping amaro, although he adds it works wonderfully with brown spirits in cocktails. You can also have fun layering amari (once you’ve built up a collection of your creations) in something like Bitter Monk’s Four Horsemen, an amaro sour utilizing four amari.
Williams suggests a frothy amaro shakerato, or something like her creation for Nostrana, Vista Alpina: Amaro Braulio (so, your own piney rendition) with quinquina, mezcal, grapefruit, lemon and demerara. O’Connor endorses the effortless and refreshing amaro and soda, which can also help you drill into flavors, and Stevenson similarly likes an amaro with one of the tonics he makes at Four Walls. Essentially, the possibilities of enjoying your amaro are about as endless as the possibilities in making it.
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