Dash

What is a dash?

A dash is a small amount that leaves the bottle with one short, decisive shake, closest to a tiny splash. Bitters usually come along for the ride: two dashes of Angostura in an Old Fashioned, three in a Sazerac, a dash of orange bitters in the classic Champagne Cocktail. The special thing about the dash: it is not exactly standardised, and that is deliberate. It works like a pinch of salt in the kitchen, small, powerful and with a touch of instinct.

How a dash is created

• The dasher cap: bottles of bitters carry a narrow pourer on top that regulates the flow and turns a shake into a repeatable small amount
• The wrist flick: flip the bottle, one short and decisive shake, and the dash is done
• The amount: in practice a dash sits at roughly one millilitre, and as a rule of thumb among bartenders: three dashes make about one bar spoon

Why the vagueness is not a flaw

A dash is fuzzy because bitters are concentrated. They are not an ingredient in the classic sense, they are seasoning, and nobody measures seasoning to the exact drop. Professionals still take it seriously: anyone building the same Old Fashioned every evening shakes from the same angle and with the same motion, so every drink is seasoned identically. The freedom of the dash lives off routine, not off whim.

From pharmacy to bar: a short history

Bitters began as medicine: German surgeon Johann Siegert, serving in Simón Bolívar's army, developed an aromatic bitters in 1824 in the town of Angostura in what is now Venezuela, as a remedy for soldiers. The product became famous as Angostura Bitters, named after the town, which is called Ciudad Bolívar today. The anecdote also tells that the oversized label on the bottle goes back to an ordering mistake and has stayed out of tradition ever since, as an anecdote it is charming, as evidence it does not count.

From the pharmacy, bitters migrated behind the bar in the 19th century, and the old bar guides of that era already called for the seasoning in dashes. Today they are the salt and pepper of cocktails, and the dash is their unit.

Distinction: drop, dash, splash and bar spoon

Four measures, four characters:

• Drop: counted and dosed one by one, typical for our saline solution, which lives in a dropper bottle for exactly that reason
• Dash: shaken out of the dasher cap, roughly one millilitre, the standard for bitters and other concentrates
• Splash: a free pour from the bottle, larger and more generous, like a splash of soda
• Bar spoon: measured, about 5 ml, the smallest measuring unit in the recipe book

Remember: the drop is counted, the dash is shaken, the splash is poured, the bar spoon is measured.

At our lounge

If two dashes of bitters sit in one of our drinks, that is no accident but routine, from the same wrist, at the same angle. Feel free to ask our team, seasoning is a question of millimetres, and the dash is its most comfortable unit.