The Bitter Truth started in 2006, when Stephan Berg and Alexander Hauck, two bartenders frustrated by the lack of decent commercial bitters behind German bars, began making their own — and turned it into a company. Working out of Pullach, Germany, they built a lineup that splits into two missions: reviving genuinely extinct historical styles, like Celery Bitters (the first commercially available in decades, and a Tales of the Cocktail Best New Product winner) and an homage to Professor Jerry Thomas, the 19th-century bartender who wrote the first published cocktail book; and inventing entirely new ones, like Chocolate and Black Cherry Bitters, built to blur old-world bitterness with new flavors. The range has earned real respect from serious names in the industry — cocktail historians David Wondrich and Dale DeGroff, and bartender Jamie Boudreau of Canon in Seattle, have all praised the lineup directly. Beyond bitters, the brand also makes a small range of liqueurs, including Apricot and Elderflower. Every bottle is still made in small batches using the same classic maceration method they started with.

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