I’ve always been a bitter person. When I used to drink alcohol, I was invariably drawn to amari, herbal liqueurs, and other potables that can feel like a much-needed punch to the taste buds. I’ve been booze-free for the past couple years, but I still crave that bitter bite—especially in the sweltering embrace of summer, when the stomach-warming effect of a bitter cocktail paradoxically makes the heat feel more bearable.
Lemon, Lime, and Bitters—Australia’s unofficial but widely recognized national beverage—is closer to a soft drink than a cocktail, but thanks to a tiny dose of concentrated flavor suspended in a soupçon of alcohol, it soars well outside the realm of simple sodas. Traditionally, LLB is a mixture of fizzy lemonade, lime cordial, and Angostura bitters, served over ice. (In the UK and the Antipodes, “lemonade” typically refers to a clear, carbonated, citrus-flavored beverage such as Sprite or 7Up. Its cousin, lemon squash, is a cloudier but still fizzy soft drink.) Although it contains barely any alcohol, LLB nevertheless attains a complexity that a cloying Shirley Temple or a one-note bitters and soda could never.
Lemon, Lime, and Bitters falls between those two extremes: not too sweet or sour, and balanced by an intensely medicinal kick of bitters. And these particular bitters—key to LLB’s rosy hue and elegant spiciness—aren’t even Australian.
In 1820, at the age of 24, a German doctor named Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert emigrated to Venezuela, where the revolutionary general Simón Bolívar named him the surgeon-general of his armies. During that time, Siegert began treating patients with a tincture he’d developed using tropical herbs and spices. Once he finalized the formula in 1824, he dubbed it Amargo Aromatico (or “aromatic bitters”) for a time, before eventually deciding to rename the elixir Angostura after the town where he lived in Venezuela (now called Ciudad Bolívar).
Soon enough, Siegert stepped away from the military and began marketing his popular Angostura bitters to the United States, the Caribbean, and to the United Kingdom. And how did those bottles find their way to Australia? According to one version of the company’s history, Carlos Siegert, son of Johann, visited Australia in 1879 as part of a promotional tour for the bitters. But according to culinary historian Jacqui Newling, PhD, affiliate in history at the University of Sydney, ads for Angostura bitters had appeared in The Australasian in 1867 and 1868. Additionally, other types of bitters had already been known in Australia since at least the 1830s.
“[Angostura’s] success at the International Exhibition in 1862 is regularly referenced in ads, described as ‘an invaluable tonic in all enervating and hot climates’ and ‘celebrated for their exquisite aromatic flavour,’” Newling tells me.
By the late 1800s, Angostura bitters had become a popular adjunct to gin (to create “pink gin”), lemonade, and even Champagne. The bitters began to appear more regularly in cocktail recipes, both in Australia and beyond, as the golden age of the cocktail reached its apex at the late 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. Indeed, an American booklet of Angostura cocktails published in 1912 includes a recipe for Angostura Phosphate, which calls for acid phosphate, lemon syrup, Angostura bitters, and “carbonic water”—not too far off from LLB.