How to make a berry shrub
Every summer my family and I travel to Montana to spend time with Chelsea’s parents, swim in the lake, and of course, eat everything huckleberry related. In Montana, huckleberries are more than a fruit, they’re a way of life. These delicious purple gems are in everything: Mimi’s Sunday morning fluffy pancakes, the tangy barbecue sauce glazing your ribs at your local brewery, and even distilled into the bourbon you’re drinking at your favorite cocktail bar. Montanans love their huckleberries so much that students from Vaughn Elementary School successfully lobbied for it to become the official state fruit.
At a local festival, I bought a bottle of huckleberry shrub to use in non-alcoholic sodas and cocktails at home - a delicious reminder of our summer adventures. But just like summer vacation, it went too quickly.
Thankfully, I was thrilled to discover California, too, has huckleberries. Moreover, unlike Montana’s huckleberries that require you to trek miles upward to the right elevation while avoiding the huckleberries’ biggest fan, the grizzly bear, it’s easier to find, too. In Oakland, the Huckleberry Botanical Preserve is filled to the brim with not only delicious huckleberries, but blackberries and thimbleberries as well.
What is a shrub?
In general, a shrub is a beverage made of fruit juice, sugar, and acid added through a variety of methods. In America, the shrub originates from a 17th century English practice where vinegar was used to preserve berries and fruits in the off-season. These concoctions were called “shrubs”, derived from the Arabic word sharāb, which means “to drink”. This process traveled to colonial America where it became common to use shrubs in water, soda water, and alcoholic drinks.
I think one of the most exciting parts of making a shrub is that it gives you the opportunity to forage for wild fresh fruits. In addition to the huckleberries at the Huckleberry Botanical preserve, you can find patches of blackberries anywhere in the Bay Area, from regional parks to the parking lot of shopping centers. While it’s fun to forage, it’s important to check local and park rules and regulations to see what’s allowed. For most cities, fruits that grow on city property are typically up for grabs. For parks, it depends - there’s no mention of foraging in the East Bay Regional parks, but California State Parks explicitly say that you’re not allowed to leave with berries.
The good news is that you don’t have to forage for berries to make a shrub - any type will work, including ones from the grocery stores or farmers’ market. In fact, you can ask farmers at your farmers’ market if they have any imperfect berries that they’ll sell you at a discount.
What kind of vinegar?
When it comes to vinegar, I read a helpful suggestion from Reddit user funnymaroon, who recommends using the best vinegar possible. They explain:
“Get a really good champagne vinegar. Not the Safeway stuff. Artisanal vinegar. (Always good advice when making a shrub, as there is an extremely pronounced difference between good vinegar and grocery store crap. The same people who make their own grenadine buy crappy gallons of apple cider vinegar for their shrubs and I don't understand the logic. Most of your flavor comes from the vinegar, so the better the vinegar, the better the shrub. You'd be FAR better off with crappy fruit and good vinegar than the other way around.)”
Because this was my first time making one, I opted to get the nicest vinegar that I could find, which was Brightland’s champagne vinegar, which was already so sweet and tart that you could drink it on its own. However, with future shrubs, I doubt I would continue this route as despite being delicious, the cost per volume was expensive and not sustainable for a casual creator like myself.
How to make a shrub
There are several ways to prepare shrubs from cooking the syrup to leaving it out at room temperatures; but I’ve based my recipe on techniques from Michael Dietsch, author of the book Shrubs: An Old-Fashioned Drink for Modern Times.
Dietsche recommends a cold method of shrub preparation that requires you to refrigerate your mixture instead of cooking it. This process takes longer than cooking, but the payoff is a purer flavor as it’s believed that cooking shrubs can cause the fruit to lose its freshness and brightness.
For my recipe, I opted with what most people recommend: an equal part of fruit, sugar, and vinegar. I first weighed the amount of berries I had and then put in equal parts sugar. From there, I masecrated the berries and let them sit in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, I pressed the berries through a strainer to extract the juice while weighing it and then placed equal amounts of champagne vinegar and let it sit in the fridge for a week.
I think this is a good starting point but always feel free to experiment - if you want your shrubs sweeter or tarter, feel free to add more vinegar or sugar!
After a week, you’re free to taste the shrub. It will most likely still have a tart taste to it but as time goes by, it’ll start to settle more and become sweeter. I usually like to add mine to some soda water and tonic syrup to make a refreshing tonic, but feel free to add some gin or other alcohol to make a nice pick me up.
Don’t take this as a firm rule though, once you see how it tastes you’re always welcome to experiment. More sugar? More vinegar? Go for it!
Berry Shrub
Servings: Varies
Ingredients
Berries of your choice
Cane sugar
Champagne or red wine vinegar
Bowl
Clean bottle (putting it in the dishwasher should be fine enough)
Instructions
Weigh berries in a bowl and then masecrate them with a muddler or back of spoon
Add equal weight sugar to the bowl and stir well until fully combined
Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for about 24 hours
Place a bowl on a scale and then strain the fruit mixture - be sure to push down on the solids to express all the juice
Scrape any left over sugar and juice into the bowl
For the final weight of the juice extract, add equal parts vinegar and mix it up
Transfer to a clean bottle and shake it up. Label the bottle and place it in the fridge
Periodically shake the bottle to keep everything mixed up
The shrub should last in the fridge for up to a year.
Shrub Tonic
Ingredients
5 OZ tonic
OR
5 OZ sparkling water
3/4 OZ tonic syrup
Juice from half a lemon or lime
1/4 OZ shrub syrup
Garnish: Wedge of lemon or lime
Instructions
Fill a glass with ice
Add shrub syrup and citrus juice
Add the tonic/tonic syrup and sparkling water
Garnish with citrus wedge
Delicious piece!