Winship's Bitters

Josh Cockle, owner and founder of Winship’s Bitters, started his career in bitters behind the bar. It was a move of necessity in an era when craft cocktails were becoming popular, but access to quality bitters was limited.

“So, I started making them for Ludivine, I made all their orange bitters and ended up making a lot of bitters for the two years I worked there. While I was doing that, I experimented and made a couple other ones,” explains Josh. “Then someone approached me about starting a company, sort of parallel to bitters, which then turned into being the whole thing.”

Now in his current role, Josh and his partners try to concoct bitters that are popular not just with bartenders, but with people at home.

For instance, Old Fashioned Bitters has a balance of blood orange, fall spices, and a little vanilla and honey for sweetness that makes it the perfect blend for someone who wants to make an easy old fashioned at home.

Their Cucumber Bitters gives off delicate flavors of lemongrass and cucumber peel mixed with spices that would turn an otherwise boring homemade gin and tonic into something elevated and impressive.

The process for making bitters seems simple.

“Basically, you can get things in nature like sticks, bark, nuts, moss, leaves, flower petals and citrus peels, all these different natural things that you extract with grain alcohol,” Josh explains.

So, after the essential oils are extracted and strained out, the solids are boiled down and diluted to create bitters. The art of it is finding the right balance of flavors.

“So, you kind of take the things you're going for and you're balancing spice, citrus, and floral and all these other things to try to combine to make one ingredient,” says Josh.

“That being said, it can really be anything. You can make it out of almost anything you want.”

Winship’s prides itself on using fresh herbs and spices and sourcing many of the ingredients locally in Oklahoma.

With bitters, a little goes a long way, just adding a few dashes of their Wormwood Bitter to a dark liquor like brandy or whiskey can really change the feel of a drink, adding a woodsy, earthy element to Manhattans or Juleps.

Using bitters like Hibiscus or Dynamic Lime in soda water provides floral and citrus flavors to a drink without added sugar.

Their Tobacco Bitters contains no tobacco, which is actually illegal to extract, but the description accurately represents the smokiness their creation will add to a drink. The main ingredient is actually smoked chipotle peppers.

Bitters can also be used for cooking, which seems like a recent trend, but as Josh points out, a lot of old cookbooks from late 1800s to early 1900s in America contained bitters in their recipes. Try adding angostura as a marinade for steak or include coffee or chicory bitters in a batch of cookies to create another dimension of flavor.

Moving forward, Josh is working on a line of CBD bitters that will be released very soon.

“It will be a full-blown lab tested CBD bitters made to be a proper dosage in your cocktail,” Josh says. “Those will be on the market very soon in about half our flavors we’ll be offering.”

When available, those will be at Barkeep Supply.

Find Winship’s Bitters online at winshipsbitters.com and at a variety of locations throughout OKC, like AMP, American Made Products at 7429 North May Avenue, OKC.