I bring a bottle of Malôrt to all holiday gatherings so everyone can have a shot together. I actually like it, but it’s always fun seeing a new person’s Malört face. Recently someone described it as tasting like boat cleaner.
They also now sell "barrel aged Malört" in a few markets (perhaps only Chicago and Minneapolis). The general consensus is that it's an improvement but not by much.
I don't drink much but usually have a bottle of Malört in the kitchen for special occasions. It lasts forever because nobody wants to drink a lot of it, and always creates a lot of entertainment at parties.
For some weird reason this stuff is incredibly common at Defcon.
If you'd like to experience the Malört of teas, you are looking for "Bitter Nail Tea" also known as Kuding, described as "one of the bitter substances you can safely ingest".
The only mixer I've ever had with Malort that actually tastes acceptable is Slush Puppie. A few years ago on a vacation a three friends each brought a bottle and we tried everything with it. A vanilla and Malort milkshake wasn't _terrible_.
The way it was pitched to me was "this is so bad that during prohibition they let people still sell this because it tasted so bad".
Tried it when I was in Chicago. If you enjoy bitter amari like Cynar or Averna you won't find this particularly especially bracing. It's an interesting local curiosity, but it's sort of _just_ bitter with not much else in terms of flavour.
Even someone who has never had an amaro might enjoy Cynar (artichoke; powerfully vegetal with a sweet finish, refreshing in a lot of the way a slice of cucumber in water is) or Averna (orange and anise, what's not to like?). If you take a sip of Malort and your brain doesn't immediately scream POISON, something is wrong.
Not sure if it’s still around but there was a local bartender there who made his own high quality version of Malört. You could find it at a few distributors around called “franklins malort” but I heard they got a cease letter and then renamed it to “bësk”. Compared to the jepesens was like bud light to a craft brew. Way better balance, still the bitter grapefruit, but also with a ton of other aromatics and spices. That stuff was delicious.
Leatherbee (iirc) made one; they had it at Publican for awhile. Here's the problem: Malort is a Bask, which is its own whole kind of digestif. If you make a Malort-like Bask on purpose, as opposed to finding it in a puddle in the basement and bottling it like Jeppson's did, what you come up with will probably be fine. I remember not hating the Leatherbee stuff (but it was incredibly high ABV and we all got pretty messed up on it).
Incredibly disgusting drink. I'm convinced Chicagoans only ever pretend to like it in order to prank unsuspecting tourists by sharing a round of shots of it.
