I've got a bottle of Angostura bitters. With roughly four dashes used so far, which leaves about a millennium's supply remaining. Does anyone actually use this stuff?? If so, what for? And how often? I'm wondering if Mr Angostura and company have a real racket going here, or if they're actually doing themselves a disservice by selling their customers centuries worth of their product in a single hit. Perhaps their sales would be better if they sold it in the same size bottle as, say, Tabasco or something. Just idle speculation as the chat here seems otherwise quiet…
(SM) It's like pepper. Get a jar of it and it lasts for ever. I had a girlfriend who was very keen on the said bitters whereas I preferred bitter. I had a sip of her drink once - it was vile.
[SM] Have you got a bottle of gin handy? Add a couple of dashes to a G & T and you get pink gin. Used to be very popular in the '60s when I used to work behind a bar.
Gin could be arranged, although it's not something I normally drink. But plainly I could buy a couple of crates of gin and the bitters would still outlast them. And a bottle of gin would lakst me 3-6 months. Y'know, I was viewing using up this bottle of bitters as a challenge, but unless I really go for it, which is sort of cheating, I don't think I'm going to manage it in my remaining lifespan.
Pink gin and water is also nice. 2 or 3 drops added to a ginger beer is one of my favourite very, very low alcohol drinks. Oh, and one of the several versions of rock shandy is 50/50 ginger ale and soda water, with a few drops of bitters. A bit of searching and I've found culinary uses at this site
[Simons Mith] When I was a student, one of the drinks of choice at the time was a long vodka which consisted of a few drops of bitters smeared round a highball glass, ice, a shot of vodka, a dash of lime and topped up with soda water. A bit girly but very drinkable.
[Rosie] Well, it's a cheap drink. No charge for bitters or soda, normally. When my dad was in the Royal Navy, it was traditional for midshipmen, and some other low-ranking officers, to drink pink gin, as all you paid for was the gin - hence it was the cheapest drink in the Officers' Mess - because midshipmen were so lowly paid.
(Phil) Didn't they have grog? Maybe not often enough. When I was a student we only drank spirits if we were deliberately trying to get as pissed as possible because in those days a shot of spirits was nearly twice the price of a pint of beer. In today's money I'd estimate the prices as £2 and £3.50.
When I was at Uni (mid-late 90s) my University Union used to do a happy hour. 50p a pint (the usual price at the time in a pub was £1-£1.25 depending on the brand). At about quarter to seven you'd see the bar packed with students buying 4 or 6 pints at a time. They would take them back to their table and drink them over the next couple of hours. You might think that the beer tasted awful after sitting in a glass for over an hour, and you'd be right. But it was cheap.
[Rosie] Yes, they did have rum until July 1970 (one eighth of a pint per day), which I think was issued as two-water grog (watered-down 2 parts water to 1 part rum). Pusser's Rum has been made since about 1980 to the old Admiralty recipe and a donation goes to the Royal Navy Sailor's Fund from every bottle sold. I have some of the blue label, bottled at 54%abv, and it's quite a fierce nip if you don't water it down at all. However, when the officers gathered for a social in their mess, the poor midshipmen (officer cadets, essentially) would have to join in, and behave like an officer, while on a phenomenally meagre wage, hence the most popular cheap, "sophisticated" drink for them (i.e. not neat spirits or beer) was pink gin.
[Phil] You may have just enlightened me. I've heard my father (who was in the Navy), talk about 'Pussers Kai'. I thought, in the context, it was cocoa with a slug of rum. This now looks likely and a quick google supports that. However this was a long time before 1980.