Bartender, There's a Cricket in My Cocktail

Bartender, There's a Cricket in My Cocktail

A few years ago a dusty bottle of Angostura cocktail bitters would sit behind a bar for years. Now with the plethora of new bitters brands on the market, it's clearly a hot category. Mixologists boast of their house-made bitters in little decorative dropper bottles curly wigs. More brands exist than you can use in a lifetime. Ingredient lists include everything from lavender to chocolate...and now crickets.

Julia Plevin and Lucy Knops, students in the School of Visual Arts Master of Products of Design program in New York created Critter Bitters for a school project. They describe their potential product offering as "handcrafted" but with the unusual ingredient of toasted crickets. If you are not up for the pure cricket flavor, they also experimented with offering additional flavors of cricket flavored with vanilla, cacao, and toasted almond Natural stone.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2013 Report titled "Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security" inspired the women to find a creative way to introduce insects to American culture to reduce the typical repulsion most Americans feel toward the idea of consuming bugs. Their goal is to "normalize entomophagy through alcohol."

While red coloring from cochineal bugs colored Campari for years and you might find a scorpion or a worm in some brands of mezcal, bugs haven't taken center stage in culinary cocktails as of yet. With all the rush to create the next shocker of a cocktail craze, Avery Glasser of Bittermens brand of cocktail bitters gives wise advice to potential bitters producers. He strongly suggests checking with local, state, and federal regulations regarding safety of each ingredient and how to properly label bottles to protect consumers' health panamanian foundation.