If you’ve visited our tasting room this summer, you’ve probably seen some type of berry featured in at least one of our cocktails. Each week we stock up on fresh berries to make your cocktail colorful and fruity! So how do we know how many strawberries or blueberries to buy each week to ensure they are as fresh as possible? While we are very good at estimating, the real answer is we don’t! Sometimes we end up buying too many (other times not enough, uh-oh).
Fortunately when we buy too many berries, there is a way to preserve that fresh berry flavor before they age past their prime. We are able to capture the fresh summer berry flavor by turning them into a shrub! Last summer we wrote up a whole guide to shrubs, including the process we use to make shrubs here in the tasting room.
This summer our shrub is a mixture of shrubs created with whichever berries we had on hand at the end of each week. After about 4 weeks, we had a shrub featuring a medley of strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries brightened by white wine vinegar for balance. Pair this shrub with Gin No. 11 and it makes for a great sweet and tart summer sipper.
Summer Berry Shrub
1½ oz Gin No. 11
¾ oz Mixed Berry Shrub
Club Soda
Add gin & shrub to a rocks glass over fresh ice. Top with soda if you like, for a bit of fizz, and garnish with a lemon twist.
