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3 Ways to Preserve Garden-to-Glass Cocktail Ingredients


In the world of craft cocktails, fresh, seasonal ingredients are queen. In 2020, more privileged parts of the world have access to most produce year-round. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, you want tomatoes in February? Lettuce in September? Peaches in April? I mean, yeah… you can get it all. But nothing tastes quite like a perfectly ripe strawberry, harvested at the peak of its natural season (June here in the Pacific Northwest).


Traditionally, crops that produced once a year would be planted in quantities that could be preserved for the remainder of the year and would still taste better than a modern-day out of season crop (which wasn’t even an option back then). So “fresh” kind of becomes this relative term. There’s “fresh” just picked in-season, there’s preserved from “fresh” just picked in-season, and then there’s “fresh” grown out-of-season and shipped across the country. If I can’t pick it off the vine right now give me a frozen or canned peach that was picked in its natural season over an unripe peach grown under lights in a warehouse any day.


Aside from freezing and canning, two more general methods for food preservation, my three favorite methods for specifically preserving cocktail ingredients from the garden are syrups, shrubs, and tinctures.



Syrups

Syrups use sugar to preserve and stabilize the components of plants and are the quickest way to do so. I know, I know sugar! Eek! Evil! Some of you may recoil at the idea of eating sugar thanks to fad diets, but if you’re okay with the “everything in moderation” motto, then this method is for you. Sugar is necessary in cocktails anyway if we want to balance out more acidic or bitter flavors. Even a Negroni, everyone’s favorite bitter classic, uses ingredients that contain natural sugars in some capacity. So just because sugar is used in a cocktail doesn’t mean it’s going to turn into a Lemon Drop.


For herbs & flowers:

Bring 12 parts water to a boil. Remove from heat and steep 1 part dried herb (or 2 parts fresh) for ten minutes to an hour, covered. Strain off the plant material using cheesecloth or a fine-mesh strainer, save the liquid (now a tea) and add an equal volume of sugar. Stir to dissolve. For leafy herbs, such as those in the mint family, the secret is to blanch the herbs first, then put them through a blender with the sugar and water before steeping.


To make 1 quart:

¼ c dried herb (½ c fresh)

3 c water

3 c sugar


For fruit:

Mix 1 part fresh fruit with 1 part sugar and 1 part water. Bring to a simmer until the fruit is broken down fully, smashing and stirring often. Allow to cool and strain off plant material.


To make 1 quart:

3 c fruit (about 1 pound)

3 c water

3 c sugar


These will store for 1 month in the refrigerator or longer in the freezer. You can also double the amount of sugar and it should last 6 months in the refrigerator.


To use in cocktails: start with ½ oz of syrup in your recipe and experiment from there.




Shrubs

Shrubs use vinegar and sugar to preserve and stabilize the components of plants. Some folks call them “drinking vinegars”. It may sound odd, and it’s not for everybody, but even if you don’t enjoy drinking shrubs you can still use them to make delicious salad dressings just by adding oil. I typically like to mix an aromatic herb with a fruit of some sort. There are two main methods to making a shrub, and several techniques. The hot method, as you can imagine, utilizes heat and is faster. The cold method, which is more traditional, utilizes no heat and takes longer, relying on natural fermentation and sugar breakdown. I’m going to show you the cold method since many consider it the only way to make a “true” shrub.