Regans' Orange Bitters No. 6

Rating: 18/23 I've been wanting to try orange bitters for a while. They seem like the next natural progression on my cocktail journey. I hear that these are on the more bitter and herbal side, but I'm hoping that the orange still shows through. Making a maple syrup old fashioned with this and Old Forester 100, I find that this makes a more bitter and herbal cocktail than just the Old Forester mixed with maple syrup. This hides the vegetal flavor of the maple syrup though and despite initially seeming a bit more brash, it ultimately seems like this achieves the cocktail's purpose better. Throwing another old fashioned with Angostura together, I find that the Angostura (19/23) goes better with the other flavors involved here than the Regans' does. Combining the two, I find that this is somehow worse than either on their own. It just ends up more muddled with some of the maple vegetal flaws not as covered, while the bitterness of the Regans' comes in. So I'm not finding this to be as good as Angostura. It's quite good and it delivers that orange flavor nicely in a bitter format, but I wouldn't give it a 19. It does improve upon the Old Forester 100 (15/23) though, so I'm thinking a 15-18. I'm out of the Old Forester, so I'm switching to Dickel 15 Single Barrel (15/23) so that I can compare this with Peychaud's (17/23). Side-by-side, this is crushing the Peychaud's. The balance is just so much better - and it's so much better than the Dickel's with maple syrup without the bitters. I'm very impressed now. I'm now thinking that this is a 17 or 18. That's quite good. Throwing an Angostura maple old fashioned made with the Dickel into the mix, it's clear that this and the Angostura are better than the Peychaud's. So this is definitely a 17 or an 18. It's a bit of a tricky call, but at least it's a small range at this point. It's a tough call, but at the end of the day, I'm going to say that this is an 18. It's very nice, but a bit situational.

Orange peel, orange peel, orange peel. That’s all it tastes like. Great for adding a boost into a drink that needs some life but it lacks the intoxicating complexity of other bitters.

Only comparing to Angustura orange, it's more bitter, more spice, less sweet candy orange. I wish I had bought a smaller bottle of angustura.

Many bars main Orange Bitters. It has a strong cardomom spice note. Great to make old fashioneds brighter or to add spice to a Martini

A classic workhorse bitters. Adds orange aroma to the top of drinks when expressing a peel isn't feasible.

Great orange bitters, enough said