Denver Made Craft Cocktail Mixers and a Recipe Worth Shaking Up

Nick Andresen’s fascination with flavor traces back to his childhood kitchen. “In my mid-twenties, working as a chemist in the pharmaceutical world, I kept thinking about the tastes I grew up with,” he says. Those memories—Scandinavian cloudberry tea simmering on one stove, Korean ginseng root concentrates steeping on another—sparked his first experiments with bitters made from aromatic herbs, bark, roots, and fruit. “I was raised between two worlds,” Nick explains, “but both spoke to a simple truth: real plants hold real power.” Today, that pursuit of bold, distinctive flavor has grown into Strongwater, a Denver-based business that elevates home bar carts and local watering holes with its award-winning cocktail mixers.

Every handmade bitter, syrup, and sparkling mixer is inspired by the global flavors Strongwater’s staff has encountered on their travels, and is intended to take you on a journey, whether to the fjords of Norway or the colorful courtyards of Italy. While in Hawaii, beverage engineer Kyle West tried a local gingerade, and it made a lasting impression. “Back in Colorado,” Kyle says, “I began formulating a ginger beer that captured that same vibrant heat and tropical brightness—complex, balanced, and unmistakably Strongwater.”

All of Strongwater’s products are made in Denver, crafted in small batches with whole-plant ingredients and Rocky Mountain water. Besides tasting great, these herbal ingredients also offer numerous health benefits, making happy hour feel good in every sense. The aforementioned ginger beer sparkling mixer’s titular ingredient soothes the stomach, while the cacao bitters combine the well-known superfood with cherry bark, an anti-inflammatory; Oregon grape, a detoxifier; and vanilla bean, which has mood-enhancing qualities.

The name Strongwater comes from an antiquated term for liquor and the shops that advertised it as medicine. It also harkens back to the origin of bitters, which started as patent medicine in the form of tinctures, or herbal preparations that use alcohol as both a solvent and a preservative for botanical extracts. Despite this strong association with alcohol, Strongwater also has many non-alcoholic options. Nick recommends the NA gin & tonic: “I’ll mix it with gin when the mood strikes, but honestly? It’s perfect on its own.”

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