The sign of a good bar: Tiny bottles of one German digestif

Washington Post

19-06-2025

The wall behind the bar at Lost Generation Brewing Company is a shrine to a distant time. A row of unmarked taps and the handwritten tap list are flanked by shelves sparsely adorned with backlit antiques. There's a gramophone, patinaed jazz-age horns, a manual typewriter, a candlestick telephone, and a few dusty volumes of Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, who inspired the name of the brewery in Washington's Eckington neighborhood.
Beneath the relics of America's Roaring Twenties sits something that dates back much further and hails from much farther away. On the counter rests a small display of tiny bottles, each wrapped carefully in brown shipping paper and labeled with a green-and-white sticker that reads 'Underberg.' Inside is 0.7 ounces — 20 milliliters — of herbal bitters made in Rheinberg, Germany, since 1846.
Founder Hubert Underberg created his namesake product as a digestif, an alcoholic swallow served after a meal thought to aid digestion. But this liqueur isn't necessarily here to help your food-truck tacos settle. The reason these palm-sized bottles are popping up at breweries, dives and bars across the D.C. region and throughout the country — in countertop racks, miniature green delivery trucks and bandoliers hanging behind the bar — is in part a triumph of branding. But it's also something of a secret handshake among bartenders, brewers and beverage enthusiasts in the know.
'It's a nice little wink,' says Jared Pulliam, head brewer and owner of Lost Generation. 'You know when you see it; someone behind the bar is not new to being behind the bar. You can presume ownership has experience.'
But the 'secret' behind the wink-and-nod is actually a trick of the beverage trade, a long-standing regulatory loophole that makes this unassuming little bottle of 44 percent alcohol more of a necessity to brewers and bar owners than a novelty.
Herr Underberg originally concocted his German brand of bitters using herbs and botanicals from 43 countries, though the exact ingredients and extraction and distillation techniques are tightly kept secrets, known only to select members of five generations of Underbergs. 'It's all-natural, no added sugar,' says Jeff Wells, Underberg brand ambassador for D.C., Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. 'The recipe and processing methods have been secrets held and closely guarded by the Underberg family since 1846.'
The Underberg label instructs that, unlike most digestifs, which are meant to be taken slowly after a filling meal, Underberg is 'not to be sipped but taken all at once and quickly because of its aromatic strong taste.' The label also boldly claims (if in very small print): 'It is not a beverage.'
In a sense, the United States government agrees. The Food and Drug Administration classifies Underberg as a food product, not an alcoholic drink, despite it consisting of nearly half alcohol (making it 88 proof). This helps explain why, even though it was sold in the U.S. starting in 1860, Underberg saw a domestic boost in popularity during Prohibition — because it was not, in fact, illegal.
This strange classification might explain Underberg's recent resurgence as well. When Lost Generation's Pulliam left his native D.C. for Sonoma, California, in 2014, to brew beer for Lagunitas, he noticed that all the bars and taprooms had Underberg behind the bar. In California, he was told, liquor licenses were hard to come by, so most establishments settled for permission to sell beer and wine. For drinkers looking for a shot in these places, Underberg provided a convenient and legal fix. 'My wife runs restaurants, and we knew all the bartenders,' Pulliam said. 'After work, we'd go grab a beer and everyone would do a round of Underberg. That's how I became indoctrinated.'
Meanwhile, back in D.C., the green-labeled bottles began to sprout up throughout the metro area. 'It really picked up steam in 2016, and since then we've seen exponential growth,' Wells said.
Area professionals push Underberg as an after-meal digestif, Wells said, but also as something you take before or during drinking to assist in digestion of beer. Some adherents swear by it as a preemptive hangover cure; others wait to slip it into their coffee as a hair-of-the-dog salve the next day. Barkeeps and mixologists all over have started incorporating Underberg into their mixed drinks, riding the recent wave of fascination with bitter-forward European-style cocktails (think Negroni).
For instance, Philadelphia's Human Robot brewery, which playfully refers to Underberg as a 'liquid tummy rub,' on its menu, puts the tiny bottle upside down in a mini bottle of Fever-Tree ginger beer for a cocktail they call 'Feverberg.'
'The sweetness of the ginger beer cuts the bitterness,' says Human Robot co-founder Jake Atkinson. 'It looks good and works as a good-tasting cocktail. And it's really good for your tummy.'
And of course, there are those who take the label at face value and down it one swallow.
'People are always looking for that dare shot,' said David Grenaldo, co-owner of Snappy's Small Bar in Petworth. 'It's something you buy for all your friends to see their reaction. They're often surprised when it's not that bad.'
Grenaldo also credits the company's loyalty program as a reason for the brand's success. Bars and individuals can turn in the tiny green caps in exchange for merchandise: 48 caps for a license plate holder; 384 for a mini 1930s-model Herb Mobile display; 480 for a green suede belt that holds 12 bottles. 'We have a couple thousand caps,' Grenaldo said. 'But we heard a rumor that they might come out with an Underberg Vespa for a million caps, so we're saving up.'
When Pulliam returned to Washington in 2019, Underberg was still scarce in the area. But when he opened Lost Generation, the District had a law that breweries could serve only their own beers at their taprooms — and Pulliam knew a way to add a shot to the menu. Not that it was ordered that frequently at the time. 'When someone ordered a round of beers and Underbergs, we always asked 'Where do you work?'' he says. 'It was almost always someone in the industry.'
Since then, Pulliam has spotted the little bottles behind the bars of more and more taprooms, breweries and restaurants. He rarely acknowledges the display, much less orders one of the tiny bottles. But all the same, he takes comfort in knowing that the odds are good that the person making the drink knows what they're doing.