Bitters and Soda Recipe: How Many Dashes to Pour

October 12, 2026

Soda water, a glass full of ice, a squeeze of lime and a few dashes of bitters. That is the whole recipe, and it takes about as long to make as it takes to read. Tall, cold and faintly spiced, it tastes like a real drink rather than a glass of water, at a small fraction of a cocktail's strength.

That small fraction is the part worth understanding. A glass with a few drops of anything in it is easy to assume is alcohol-free. Made with the classic aromatic bitters, bitters and soda is a very low-alcohol drink, and the number of dashes decides how low. For someone who doesn't drink at all, that number is the whole question.

What is actually in the glass

Soda water is water with carbon dioxide dissolved in it under pressure. That gas is what makes the bubbles. Fentimans, for one, adds a little salt: it lists carbonated water, salt and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) on its soda water (shop Fentimans soda water), sold in a 200 ml bottle that makes one tall glass.

Bitters are concentrated infusions of bitter roots, barks, peels and spices, made to be used by the dash rather than poured. A dash is the small splash that comes out when an upside-down bottle with a narrow pouring top is given a quick shake. Bitters do for a drink roughly what salt and pepper do for food: the amount is tiny, and the change is out of all proportion to it. The cocktail bitters guide covers the families of bitters, and how cocktail bitters are made follows a bottle from botanicals to dasher top.

Lime does two jobs. The juice adds acid, which makes the drink taste brighter and drier, and the oil in the peel adds a smell that reaches you before the first sip.

The base decides the alcohol

Bitters come in two kinds of base, and the label says which.

The first is spirit. Angostura aromatic bitters is 44.7 percent alcohol by volume (ABV, the share of the liquid that is pure alcohol), according to the product label (shop Angostura aromatic bitters). Sweden's state alcohol monopoly lists the same bottle among its spirits, in a category it calls bitter. In the United States, federal regulations define a nonbeverage product as a flavor or flavoring extract (among other things) made with tax-paid distilled spirits that is unfit to be used as a beverage. A bottle meant to be used by the dash is a seasoning rather than a drink, but the alcohol in it is ordinary alcohol.

The second base is vegetable glycerin, a thick, sweet-tasting liquid used in place of spirit. Fee Brothers, a family business in Rochester, New York, makes its bitters this way. By the company's own account its bitters contain no distilled spirits, but the flavoring ingredients do carry some alcohol, the same way vanilla extract does. Fee Brothers West Indian Orange bitters (shop Fee Brothers West Indian Orange bitters) gets its flavor principally from the skins of oranges grown in the West Indies, according to the maker.

Neither base makes a glass that is strictly free of alcohol. For anyone who needs a glass with none at all, the label on the bottle is the place to check.

The dash ledger

A dash has no fixed size. Fee Brothers' guidance for its orange bitters pairs one to three dashes with 0.3 milliliters, which puts a single dash at 0.3 milliliters or less. The table below takes 0.3 milliliters a dash as the small end and a generous full milliliter as the large end, for Angostura at 44.7 percent, poured into 180 ml of soda, before any ice melts. Pure alcohol weighs about 0.79 grams per milliliter, the ratio behind the federal standard drink's 14 grams in 0.6 fluid ounces (about 17.7 milliliters).

Two yardsticks help read the numbers. A US standard drink holds 14 grams of pure alcohol, the amount in a 5-ounce glass of 12 percent wine, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. And under federal labeling rules, a malt beverage (a beer, in plain terms) may only call itself non-alcoholic if it contains less than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume.

Dashes of Angostura	At 0.3 ml a dash	At 1 ml a dash
2 dashes	0.2 g alcohol; about 0.15% ABV; 1.5% of a standard drink	0.7 g alcohol; about 0.5% ABV; 5% of a standard drink
4 dashes (this recipe)	0.4 g alcohol; about 0.3% ABV; 3% of a standard drink	1.4 g alcohol; about 1% ABV; 10% of a standard drink
8 dashes (a heavy bartender's pour)	0.85 g alcohol; about 0.6% ABV; 6% of a standard drink	2.8 g alcohol; about 1.9% ABV; 20% of a standard drink

Read across the rows and the pattern is plain. A light hand with a narrow dasher keeps the glass under the line a beer would need to call itself non-alcoholic. A generous hand with a wide one puts a fifth of a standard drink in the glass, about the alcohol in one ounce of 12 percent wine. Ice melt brings every figure down a little further. None of them reaches zero.

Which bitters, which garnish

Aromatic bitters are the place to start, and they turn the soda a rosy pink. The spirit base matters less than the flavor here, so let the garnish lead.

Bitters	What the maker says about it	Garnish
Angostura aromatic	Adds complexity and intensifies the flavor of other ingredients	Lime wedge
Fee Brothers West Indian Orange	The skins of West Indian oranges	Lime, or an orange peel
Regans' Orange No. 6	Orange bitters, developed by the writer and former bartender Gary Regan with the Sazerac Company	Orange peel
Peychaud's	Anise, cherry and herbal notes; the bitters that helped define the Sazerac cocktail	Lemon peel
Fee Brothers Celery	An interesting background flavor	Lime, and a pinch of salt on the rim if you like

For the second or third bottle, Regans' orange bitters (shop Regans' Orange Bitters No. 6), Peychaud's (shop Peychaud's bitters) and Fee Brothers celery bitters (shop Fee Brothers celery bitters) each move the glass in a different direction. Two bottles can share a glass, too: try two dashes of aromatic with two of orange.

Ingredients, for one tall glass

180 ml (6 oz) soda water, refrigerated and unopened. Most of one 200 ml bottle of Fentimans soda water.
4 dashes bitters: aromatic bitters such as Angostura, or orange bitters such as Fee Brothers West Indian Orange
1 lime
Ice, enough to fill a tall glass to the rim
Optional: 1 barspoon (a long, thin bar spoon holding about 5 ml) simple syrup (sugar dissolved in water)

Method

Chill the soda. Refrigerate the unopened soda for at least two hours, so it meets the ice cold and keeps more of its fizz. If there is room, put a tall glass in the freezer for ten minutes.
Fill the glass with ice. Fill it to the rim, with the largest cubes you have. The drink should be cold all the way to the last sip.
Add the lime. Cut a wedge about an eighth of the lime, squeeze it over the ice so some of the peel's oil lands on the cubes, and drop it in.
Pour the soda gently. Open the bottle only now and pour about 180 ml down the inside of the glass or along the back of a barspoon, rather than straight onto the ice. Leave a finger's width at the top. At Denver's lower air pressure, soda should foam harder and go flat sooner than at sea level, so a slow pour matters more here; the vermouth and soda recipe explains why.
Dash the bitters on top. Hold the bottle upside down over the glass and give it four short, sharp shakes. Count them. Aromatic bitters land as a dark cloud on the surface and drift down through the bubbles in pink threads, and the smell of spice reaches you at once. Adding the bitters last, on top, puts their aroma at the rim where the nose meets it.
Lift once, then taste. Give the glass one slow lift from the bottom with a barspoon, rather than stirring round and round, which knocks out bubbles. Taste. If it is thin, add a dash. If it is flat in flavor, squeeze in more lime. If the bitterness sits harshly, a barspoon of simple syrup rounds it out, and the rich simple syrup recipe makes a bottle that keeps.

When the glass is wrong

What you taste	Likely cause	What to do
Like faintly spiced water	Too few dashes, or a nearly empty bottle throwing small ones	Add one or two more dashes and count them next time
Medicinal, bitter at the back of the throat	Too many dashes for the amount of soda	Top up with more soda, or add a barspoon of simple syrup
Flat	Warm soda, an opened bottle, or a hard pour onto the ice	Use a cold, freshly opened bottle and pour down the side
Dull, nothing on the nose	Bitters stirred in from the bottom, or no citrus oil	Dash the bitters on top last and squeeze the lime over the ice

The bottled cousin and the family firm

Angostura itself sells a bottled cousin of this drink, Lemon Lime & Bitters, which it describes as a non-alcoholic sparkling drink of lemon and lime flavors, sparkling pink with hints of orange. A formulated, bottled drink is a different thing from a glass dashed by hand, and its label is what settles its alcohol content.

The pink color is the giveaway in any glass. A few dashes are enough to tint a tall drink, which says something about how concentrated the bottle is. The Angostura bitters guide traces the bottle back to an 1824 formula from Venezuela, and the history of bitters explains how a medicine ended up on the back bar.

Fee Brothers took a long road to the bitters business. The family had turned a Rochester butcher shop into a saloon and delicatessen by 1863, stayed in business through Prohibition and the Depression, and began offering grenadine and bitters only under the family's third generation, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. For many years, by the company's account, it was one of the last producers of cocktail bitters in the United States.

Who the glass is for

For the friend who is driving, pacing themselves, or wants something in hand that looks like a drink, bitters and soda is a gracious pour. For anyone avoiding alcohol entirely, for reasons of health, faith, recovery or pregnancy, say what is in it, and offer the zero-proof Negroni instead. The non-alcoholic drinks guide covers the wider cabinet.

The quiet lesson of this glass is that bitters are seasoning, and seasoning is measured. Counting four dashes instead of shaking until it looks right is the same habit that makes an Old Fashioned (whiskey stirred with sugar and bitters) taste the same twice, and it is also the only honest way to answer the question a careful guest will eventually ask: how much is in this? The bitters named here (shop the cocktail bitters collection) and the soda (shop sodas and waters) ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com.