How to make your own drinking vinegars
What is a drinking vinegar?
Put quite simply, it's a mix of fruit, sugar and apple cider vinegar that you can then mix with everything from soda water or tonic water to gin, prosseco or whisky. Whilst they're higher in sugar than kombucha as there's no scoby to feed off the sugar, they're still a great gut-loving drink thanks to the huge amount of apple cider vinegar present. Health benefits aside, it’s also just a really tasty drink that feels a little more grown up than your usual fruity mixers.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN SHRUBS
There’s a few ways to make drinking vinegar depending on how much time you have and your preferred way of infusing fruit. We've made three different flavours in three different ways so we'll talk you through all of these, as well as a 4th option if you have a little more time on your hands.
METHOD 1: COLD INFUSION
Time needed: 2-3 days
Equipment needed: a bowl, an airtight glass container + a mesh cloth (such as these here) or sieve
Ingredients:
500g of fruit
1 cup of sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
Method:
1. Take your fruit of choice* and slice, peel and mush it up until it's broken down a little - the riper the fruit, the better.
2. Add the sugar to the fruit and leave it in a covered container (not airtight) for 2-3 days
3. It'll produce more liquid over this time. Drain the liquid into a glass jar using a mesh cloth, then add the apple cider vinegar to the liquid and shake slightly to combine.
4. Add the lid so it’s airtight and store in the fridge for up to 2 months.
Notes:
*we find the best fruit to use for this method is a soft fruit such as berries or stone fruit. Something like apple doesn’t work that well
The amount of each ingredient is just a rough guide - we recommend sticking to these quantities the first time, then adjusting dependent on your preferences - more/less/alternative sugar, more/less vinegar etc.
METHOD 2: HOT INFUSION
Time needed: 3 hours
Equipment needed: a pan, an airtight glass container and a mesh cloth (such as these here) or a sieve
Ingredients:
500g of fruit
1 cup of sugar
1 cup water
1 cup apple cider vinegar
Method:
1. Add the sugar and water to a pan over a medium heat. Stir continuously until they're fully combined then turn the heat down to low to let the excess water boil off. After about 5 minutes, add the fruit and continue to heat over a low heat for a further 10 minutes, or until the liquid has taken on the colour of the fruit and the fruit has been stewed.
2. Wait for the mixture to cool then strain the liquid from the fruit (keep the fruit to eat with yoghurt or porridge). Add the liquid to the glass container then add in the apple cider vinegar and shake slightly to combine.
3. Add the lid so it’s airtight and store in the fridge for up to 2 months .
Notes: we find it harder to decrease the sugar content when using this method as it won't create the 'syrup' consistency. It's also harder to switch out sugar for honey or maple as it doesn't combine the same way. That said… we do tend to use this method the most as it’s the quickest.
METHOD 3: SAME BUT DIFFERENT...
Not necessarily a separate method, but method 2 can also be broken down into steps. We always keep a jar of infused sugar syrup in the fridge for cocktails (which we highly recommend - it sounds fancier than it is! Step 1 above is all it takes) so once we have this, it's also super quick to turn it into a shrub by just mixing a little with vinegar, then adding this to tonic water.
METHOD 4: ALL IN ONE
Time needed: 5 - 7 days
Equipment needed: an airtight glass container and a mesh cloth (such as these here) or a sieve
Ingredients:
500g of fruit
1 cup of sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
Method:
1. Take your fruit of choice and slice, peel and mush it up until it's broken down a little - the riper the fruit, the better.
2. Add both the sugar and the apple cider vinegar to the fruit and leave it in a covered container (not airtight) - we tend to use a large glass jar for this
3. After 5-7 days (longer if you want a stronger fruit flavour, less time if you're impatient like us) strain the liquid from the fruit into a glass container
4. Add the lid so it’s airtight and store in the fridge for up to 2 months.
Notes: This one is probably the easiest for getting a super low sugar content from as you don't have to worry about anything boiling down or not producing liquid. We've gone as low as 1/4 cup honey on this one before and it was very strong on the ACV front but we're sort of into that!
Flavour Combinations
We could go on endlessly here (nothing gets us going more than good flavour pairings), but we'll instead keep it to the basics.
FRUIT + HERBS
We've tried a lot of different fruit over the past year or so, and we find stone fruit and citrus always work the best. We also love root based flavours such as ginger and turmeric, and don't forget the magic of herbs when it comes to infusing! Another interesting flavour we tried was earl grey infused syrup - it needs to be infused for a long time to overtake the vinegar flavour, but it's still pretty great. Just to get you started, here are the flavour combinations pictured above:
- Rhubarb and basil with apple cider vinegar
- Pomegranate and mint with apple cider vinegar and a splash of balsamic vinegar
- Blood orange, grapefruit and rosemary with apple cider vinegar
VINEGARS
Our go-to is always apple cider vinegar because it comes with so many health benefits (just make sure you use unpasteurised ACV with the mother!), but it's also fun to add other elements such as balsamic vinegar or even champagne vinegar.
SUGAR
Sugar gets a bad rep, but it’s an essential element of drinking vinegar unless you just really love the taste of vinegar - it helps to bring out the fruity flavours and reduce the tartness. We once tried going sugar free just to see what happened and the only way to make it enjoyable was to mix it with a sugary mixer… which defeats the purpose of going sugar free. You can use honey or maple syrup but truthfully cane sugar does the job the best (and is much more affordable).
PAIRINGS
For day to day drinking, sparkling water or soda water (we're yet to understand the difference between the two...) is our go-to, on a ratio of about 5:1 water to shrub. Come the weekend though, we're all about shrub-based cocktails. As you've already done all the hard work, making something quite 'fancy' is really easy now. It's the perfect addition to a G&T or bellini-style with prosecco, but works with any spirit and mixer depending on the flavours you've used. For example, summer lends itself favourably towards a strawberry and basil shrub paired with soda water and vodka, whereas in winter we'd veer towards an apple and cinnamon shrub paired with ginger ale and whiskey.