Owner of The Bitter Ginger is hardly bitter when it comes to his product.

Brian Mazurek operates according to a simple principle: “No fake shit.” The slogan appears on The Bitter Ginger website and is apparent in his product – local citrus, herbs and botanicals create unique and intense flavors for craft cocktails and more.

Mazurek began crafting bitters while restaurant and bar manager for Big Sur’s Post Ranch Inn. He started The Bitter Ginger two years ago. It may seem like a reach, but Mazurek had already won a national bitters competition run by GreenBar Distillery.

“That gave me the impetus,” he says. “I thought ‘Hey, I can do this.’”

Weekly: How do you explain the growing interest in bitters?

Mazurek: It’s bartenders being curious, looking back at old pre-Prohibition cocktail recipes, finding mysterious ingredients and trying to re-create them. Prior to Prohibition there were hundreds of bitters companies, maybe thousands. Now you’re seeing a resurgence.

What hooked you?

For me it started as making a sense of place. I wanted to tell a story – the things you’d smell on a hike in Big Sur. I love to talk about bitters. I love to teach and learn.

Any mistakes along the way?

There’ve been mistakes. Last year we took an order for 2,500 bottles to go into a distillery’s club package. I was making bitters in one-gallon batches. Now I have 22 gallons to make, pouring every one-ounce bottle by hand. I was off by a 50th of an ounce on every bottle, so I was 40 bottles short. I had to go back and pour a little out of every bottle to make up the difference. But it showed we could do it.

How big do you want to be?

I don’t want to be huge. If we get too big, we have to move. I don’t want to go to the store to buy oranges. I want to pick them from trees.