How Brooklyn’s Bar Americano Makes Its Iconic Foam-Topped Vermouth

Steve Kämmerer didn’t know he’d be starting a movement when he put the House Vermouth on his menu at Bar Americano. At his aperitivo-style bar in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Kämmerer pulls a serving of Spanish vermouth on tap before piping a thick spiral of sweet, orange foam on top. He always wanted to serve vermouth on tap to imitate European drinking culture when developing Bar Americano, but he was less certain about how to dress it up.

Kämmerer and his team tested a number of garnishes like orange peels and olives. During the R&D process, the idea for an orange-flavored foam struck.

“It’s very visually appealing, and the flavor is true to what vermouth should be like,” he says. “The orange matches and complements the vermouth. You see it in peoples’ reactions to the contrast in textures and colors.”

The bar’s claim-to-fame drink begins with 4 ounces of a full-bodied vermouth from Cueva Nueva in Catalonia, Spain. In his opinion, Spanish vermouth is leagues more complex than its Italian counterpart.

“It’s full-bodied and has a very dark color, which is ideal for the contrast between the orange foam and the vermouth,” Kämmerer says.

For one batch, bartenders put 650 grams of strained, fresh orange juice — ideally from Valencia oranges, Kämmerer says — into a blender with 150 grams of simple syrup and a few grams each of the leavening agents methyl cellulose and xanthan gum. The syrup, cellulose, and gum introduce a viscosity that helps the foam retain its airy heft in the glass. The mixture then goes into an iSi canister, the nitrous oxide-powered tool used for aerating substances like whipped cream. The tool disperses the liquid in a mousse-like texture and makes the foam too thick to mix into the vermouth, meaning it’ll stay fluffy throughout the drinking experience.

The team at Bar Americano keeps charged canisters in the refrigerator during service to reduce oxidation, which would occur if the foam was pre-dispensed. When ordered, a bartender adds 4 ounces of vermouth to a rocks glass over a few ice cubes. For the garnish, they’ll agitate the iSi to ensure proper emulsification, then discharge the device while rotating the glass.

Kämmerer expected the bar’s eponymous Americano Classico and Americano Bianco to be the “house cocktails,” but instead, drinkers from around New York flock to his bar for the foam-topped vermouth. “After three years, we are selling more House Vermouths than Americanos,” he recounts. “And I think you can blame Instagram for that.”

The drink’s striking colors and competing textures have created a perfect storm for likable, repostable content. But Kämmerer had a different — if not more gustatory — vision. “The idea for the foam was we wanted people’s first time drinking vermouth to be memorable, to be something they’ve never seen before,” he says.

Bar Americano opened in 2022, which Kämmerer remembers as a time when American drinkers rediscovered Italian aperitivo culture — the very custom from which Bar Americano pulls inspiration. More drinkers taking a liking to vermouth comes as an upshot of both the current aperitivo and sober-curious movements.

“Vermouth is an obscure category when it comes to American consumption of spirits and fortified wines in general,” he says. “The fact that people are more aware of drinking and binge drinking also helps; with them gravitating to low-ABV cocktails and fortified wines” vermouth fits the bill.

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