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See Also: Mixing It Up with AZ Bitters Lab
For the last couple years, cocktail lovers and husband and wife team Bill and Lillian Buitenhuys have been keeping themselves busy in their Chandler kitchen by experimenting with exotic and indigenous ingredients to create perfect tiny batches of their handcrafted bitters with hopes of one day making their creative bitters available to the public.
Currently, the duo’s tiny bottles of bitters have only made their way into the hands of Valley mixologists and family friends in the form of gifts but as of Friday, the couple is one step closer to making their “fun little explosions of flavor” available to everybody.
On Friday, AZ Bitters Lab posted on their Facebook page the good news that the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau has approved their signature Figgy Pudding flavor as a “non-beverage flavoring extract” under Code of Federal Regulations 27CFR 17.134.
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This means that the couple can legally sell their bitters as a food product and that the AZ Liquor Board will NOT have jurisdiction over their product. Instead, the bitters will be overseen by the Maricopa County Health Department.
Now the Buitenhuys just need to get their permits from the Maricopa County Health Department and, as Bill puts it “scale up from 2 quart jars to 6 gallon drums” and the couple will officially be in the bitters business.
They hope to have their line of bitters available to the public sometime in November. Keep an eye on the AZ Bitters Facebook page for more details.
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