DIY: It’s a Shrubbery!!
Call to Arms, Drinkage, Rum September 6th, 2007
I was introduced to the concept of the ‘Shrub’ family of cocktails throught Eric Felten’s upcoming book How’s Your Drink? of which you will hear much more about in an upcoming post and of whom I’m not the only fan as Camper has a nice write-up on some of Felten’s articles for the Wall Street Journal. In his book, Felten dicusses the use of “Shrub”, a fruit syrup often using a vinegar base, as a method of flavoring and creating shrub cocktails. If you’re like me, the thought of using anything so harsh and tart as vinegar in anything except a dirty martini (and some people have a strong opinion on those to start with) throws you off-kilter and causes your brow to furrow in that imperious and skeptical way any time another sort of shrub tries to explain or justify…well…damned near anything.
However, the more I thought about it, and the more I read Felten’s reasons for why vinegar shouldn’t be disregarded as an ingredient in a quality and balanced cocktail (it’s both sweet and tart, where we normally use sugar and citrus to similar, and frequent, effect) the more I was sold on the idea. Where it lost me, however, was in the use of raspberries. You see, I hate them. Unequivocally. Everyone in my family raves about them, and my wife keeps getting me to try them in various and sundry manners, but the best I can ever come to is, ‘It’s not as awful as I thought it would be!’ Now, you can use any form of fruit to create a shrub syrup for mixing, but, damn the gods, we had raspberries. And there it was. Plus, if it wasn’t any good it meant I had two valid reasons not to drink it.
Creating a shrub syrup of this sort is simple, presuming you can find White Wine Vinegar (which I had trouble doing). I was only able to find enough for 3/4 of the amount called for and I made up for the rest by using Rice Vinegar, to no ill effect, as it seemed to have the closest match of sweet:tart and coloring to the white wine variety. Let’s see what Mr. Felten has us up to here:
Raspberry Shrub Syrup
Step 1:
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup water
Bring water to a boil and whisk sugar in until dissolved and reduce heat for a few minutes.
Step 2:
- 2 pints fresh raspberries
- 2 cups white wine vinegar
Add raspberries and sitr occasionally for about 10 minutes. Add vinegar and bring to boil for two more minutes. Let mixture cool, strain, and bottle it.
Well, apparently while I find raspberries terrible to taste the smell of them in that 10 minute steeping period is sensational, just unbelievably good. However, upon throwing the 2 cups of vinegar in and bringing it to a full boil you wonder if your sinuses and tear ducts will ever recover the onslaught of caustic and harsh smells coming off the pot. But, I did as told, cooled the mixture, strained it, and let it sit and whipped up my wife, Joana, a Raspberry Rum Shrub:
Raspberry Rum Shrub
- 1 oz raspberry shrub syrup
- 2 oz dark rum
- 4 oz ginger ale or soda water
Build with ice in a stemmed goblet, and stir. Garnish with raspberries or whatever you damned well please and have available (since I used all of them in the syrup, duh).
This is a very nice mixed drink and my wife has actually come back from three or eight more since the first. So, that means something. I tasted it essentially to see how vinegar affects the drink components as a whole and must say this shows a lot of potential. The tart is more tangy and sharp than you are used to with citrus fruits but the sugar in the first step really balances that out (I can definitely tell how important it is to use white wine vinegar versus white distilled vinegar in this). Also, I think that some additional sort of sweetening element is called for (e.g. ginger ale) just to round it our even further given that the drink suffered quite a bit when club soda was used. I used Mount Gay rum for the photographed version for the same reason, though the dark rum version was well-received too.
All in all it was a very interesting experience in throwing a hardly-used ingredient into a mixed drink and seeing what happened. My next version of a shrub will involve ginger as I’d like to prepare for the Fall drinking season and I think that has a lot of possibilites; plus, I’ll actually be able to drink a ginger shrub.
If you’d prefer to just buy your shurb syrup and/or you’re a lazy lout, Eric Felten refers you to Tait Farm’s fruit shrubs. Give this a try some weekend, you’ll be better for it. Cheers!
Update:
Check out Robert’s fine post on his use of vinegars in gastriques to flavor cocktails and enhance food pairings here at his Explore the Pour blog. Nice work, Robert, I’ll have to sic Joana on this project, just so long as she reduces the damn balsamic vinegar out on the grill or something; the kids gave her merciless hell for stinking up the house, hehe.
Bring me a shrubbery!
I’m also reading the preview copy of Felten’s book, and earmarked the shrub page to come back to. I believe I’ve seen one or two cocktails around here with balsamic vinegar added, though I don’t think I’ve ever tried one. I wonder what that added flavor element would do. Drink and see, drink and see.
I was just reading about these in Trader Vic’s Bartender’s guide. I didn’t see any mention of vinegar, but there’s certain to be a bit of fermentation. Mostly it’s Juice + Rum + Sugar and let sit for anywhere from 5 days to 6 weeks, then strain through a muslin bag.
Very simple recipes too, and apparently they make fantastic cold weather drinks served hot. I’m inspired now to give these a try.
Camper: I thought about the balsamic vinegar while staring at the bottles in the aisle and it’s just such a different beast from a plain white wine vinegar that I can’t even get started on thinking about what one might do with it. Anyone tasted a mixed drink with balsamic vinegar or have first-hand experience they’d like to share?
Blair: Damn, I completely intended, and promptly forgot, to mention the Rum Shrub most traditionally found which, as you mention, involves oranges, sugar, and rum and a long steeping period. I assume this would create the tart fermentation the vinegar provides in the version provided by Felten. Thanks for bringing it up as you’re exactly right.
A recipe for the more traditional ‘Rum Shrub’ can be found here folks: http://www.guntheranderson.com/liqueurs/rumshrub.htm
Funny. I also have a preview of the Felten book, and I also (mentally) earmarked the Shrub for later experimentation.
It really is a great read, isn’t it? I’m booking through it so quickly that when it pubs at the end of November, I’ll probably have to reread it so I can review it intelligently.
Vinegar in cocktails is my most recent obsession and is turning out wonderfully. I have been working very closely with our chef to make some really unique cocktails and here are some of the concepts I have come up with (I will be writing about most of these on my blog soon):
The Wreck – A Vanilla Cardamom Sidecar
This cocktail is basically a classic sidecar which gets a bit of vanilla cardamom gastrique added. A gastrique (which I’ve seen spelled a variety of different ways) is like a vinegar syrup, but it is made exclusively from vinegar, sugar, and whatever flavors you want to add. To make a gastrique, caramelize the sugar, add vinegar, and steep in flavors (to put it shortly). This drink has become so popular at our restaurant that I actually got in trouble for using up all the vanilla and cardamom in the kitchen. Other gastriques work well too, but this kind of got me started.
Megroni
I wrote about this one on my site recently, and this answers the questions about if anyone has used balsamic yet. I make a red wine basalmic syrup and use it in place of sweet vermouth in a Negroni twist. I really like it and am trying to find other homes for it, but it is more difficult. It does work well though in dashed portions as a bitters of sorts.
A note on vinegars in cocktails – this probably goes without saying, but try to think of them in ways you would food. For example, use a rice vinegar instead of a white wine if you are going to use Asian spices or ingredients. The properties can change depending on the type of vinegar. I really like using red wine vinegar in the gastriques I have been working with because the color comes out really cool and it adds a bolder flavor.
Anyway, I really got excited when reading about this topic and thought I would just type up some of the things I have been working on because they were really topical here. Great post!
Michael: It really is a good book and I’ll be running my full review in late October. The shrub experiment is well worth doing.
Robert: Thanks for sharing the recipes and your experience in using vinegar-based ingredients! I’m going to give The Wreck a try; that sounds fantastic. I was really surprised how well it came together and have been brainstorming how to further incorporate vinegars into cocktails since it’s an entirely new realm of flavor.
Make sure to give us an update. I would love to hear others thoughts on how to use vinegar because I really don’t have anyone to bounce vinegar concepts off of!
Don’cha just love a post or article that proves you just aren’t completely insane?
I was just in a funky market in Columbus last week and one of the stalls had a bunch of really cool, esoteric vinegars. All I could think of was, “I wonder what kind of cocktail I could use these in?”
The downside is, now I’ll have to go back and get some!
Ok-as one who works the kitchen angle; I love balsamic syrup. I take balsamic vinegar and reduce it by a third to half, let it cool and pour it over fresh strawberries with some fresh whipped cream or mascarpone. This dark syrup adds a rich, almost dark chocolaty taste with a tanginess that hits the back of the mouth after tasting the spicy nuances. The syrup is sweet but not overly sweet and seems to be a wonderful balance to fresh strawberries. The thing of it is-when I am reducing balsamic vinegar in the kitchen it smells awful so be prepared. I think it would be interesting to experiment with balsamic in a shrub.
Hey Gabriel; I am still doing the vinegar thing even though you’ve moved to getting all Bison-grassed up on vodka. I just posted a more descriptive explanation of gastriques over on my blog, so if anyone is interested in the comment I left earlier and wanted to look up some of those drink ideas I was talking about. I put up more specific info over there to avoid completely taking over the comment section here.
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