Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Mazurek.
Hi Brian, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I am the Bitter Ginger. I make extremely small batch bitters and shrubs for craft cocktails, digestive health and creative cooking in Big Sur. I am a transplant from Spokane, WA to the very wild and beautiful coast of California. We are very fortunate to live on a small but mighty citrus and avocado ranch overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Apple Pie Farms is the beautiful place we are lucky to call home, and the family that homesteaded the property planted a mesmerizing array of citrus that I get to play with. I moved here in 2009 to job-sit for my brother while he attended the local college’s six-month-long fire academy. After a month of falling in love with Big Sur, I fell in love with my future wife, who also happened to be my brother’s best friend. After graduating from fire academy, my brother was hired by the Portland Fire Bureau and subsequently moved. I however stayed, kept his house, kept his job, and kept his best friend, and here we are 11 years later. That is how I got here, but what is it I actually make? Bitters is the original cure-all medicine. Bitters are used to preserve and extract the medicinal properties of roots and herbs to travel long distances. These roots and herbs all have beneficial properties for your digestive health, your kidney, your liver, and inflammation – that is why Bitters were originally created. Then we got smart and added them to booze. Bitters found a home in early cocktails as concentrated flavor stimulants that add a nice kick to the mix even though they are only used by the dash. The often secret formulas include a variety of herbs, fruits, spices, and roots distilled in a base liquor. The Prohibition was the downfall of the vibrant bitters making industry.
No longer considered medicine, small bitters makers all but disappeared, leaving only the most established mass producers like Angostura, produced in Trinidad. My history is in restaurants. I have run restaurants and bars for the last 20 years. My most recent official restaurant role was as Bar Manager at Sierra Mar at Post Ranch Inn. I began making cocktail bitters and shrubs for our cocktail program utilizing the bountiful seasons here on the central coast. During the winter of 2017 a bridge failed, a mountain slid, and a large chunk of Big Sur effectively became an island for eight months. Out of necessity, I started bottling and selling my bitters every Monday in front of the Big Sur River Inn along with a few other local artisans. 3.5 years have gone by since I started with that little table and now you can find my bitters, shrubs, and handcrafted kegged cocktails in restaurants, bars, and independent stores along the central coast as well as online at thebitterginger.com.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There has been a lot of lessons learned throughout this journey but 2020 has definitely been the most challenging and forced me to innovate. We were poised for a summer season filled with private events, fundraisers, and busy restaurants needing our products. When the Shelter-in-place orders started, I had to scramble to find new ways to replace revenue. We were able to shift our focus from curating private events to problem-solving for a restaurant we worked with and collaborated on a new way for them to serve drinks. With the focus on outdoor dining, we curated a cocktail and mocktail bar for the Big Sur River Inn. The bar was a blast to curate. By creating ten drinks batched and served on draught the River Inn could have any server or bartender serve craft cocktails in record time. All drinks were served over crushed ice, almost like a boozy slushee, at a bar under the redwoods and along the Big Sur River. It’s been a fun and busy summer filled with new experiences and watching so many folks sit in adirondack chairs in the river enjoying one of my creations was definitely exciting.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My passion for bitters was born during my time as the Bar Manager at Sierra Mar at Post Ranch Inn. I was eager to find ways to have the craft cocktails served at the restaurant mirror the focus of the food. The food at Sierra Mar is driven by a hyper local consciousness. I took a look at mass-produced bitters like Peychaud’s and Angostura bitters and was curious to find a way to change both the carbon footprint and customization of this classic cocktail seasoning. Bringing together the epitome of aromas one would find whilst hiking around Big Sur, I created my first batch of “Big Sur Bitters.” They feature citrus from Apple Pie Ranch, bay, sage, and other secrets of the coast. To my surprise, my “Big Sur Bitters” was the 2016 winner of Green Bar distillery’s Bar Keep challenge. This is a national competition from which the top three contenders were from Nashville, Vegas and Big Sur. In 2019, we were invited to a craft distillers festival in Berlin as a vendor and guest speaker. The Destille Berlin was an amazing opportunity to have thousands of people with no knowledge of me or my product taste and learn about our little business. There was a woman who had grown up in San Louis Obispo but had been living in Germany for the last 20 years.
When she breathed in the aroma of my Big Sur bitters, she cried out to her husband, “it smells like home!” Though we live in California, with the outstanding growing season of the Central Coast, seasonality still plays a large part in how I produce. I make extremely small batches of bitters. They range from as small as 1 to 5 gallon batches. This in part is to make sure we are keeping our footprint on the ranch as small as possible, but most importantly it keeps us producing in Big Sur itself. It also allows us to take advantage of any harvest no matter how small. We did a batch of apple bitters that only produced a dozen bottles, which was perfect for Christmas- that’s how many neighbors we have. We will often create a batch based on one tree having and epic bumper crop or a neighbor gifting us a small basket prickly pears. Living in Big Sur often means cooking with what you have, not what the recipe calls for, and it has boosted my and creativity and how I look at my craft.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
This Ginger’s biggest joy comes from livening up someone’s day by introducing them to new flavors and crafting a cocktail just for them. The saddest thing in the world is to buy a beautifully crafted product and then have it sit on a shelf because you are unsure of what to do with it. My wife and I have spent quite a bit of time cooking together this pandemic, and we constantly reach for my bitters in our food recipes. It sparked a new format for sharing our recipes. When we give out a drink recipe for one of my products, we also try and share a food recipe right along with it. My goal is to share with people how vast and exciting the world of bitters can be. Pre-pandemic we were able to teach a bitters making class at the Monterey Museum of art for about 25 people, and it was amazing to see the enthusiasm for creating and learning about this old medicine and new techniques for bringing them into your daily life.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: thebitterginger.com
- Instagram: @thebitterginger
Image Credits
Headshot: Michelle Magdalena The Bitter Ginger in action: Trish Hansen All other photos: Lacey Mazurek
