Easy Strawberry Shrub Drink Recipe
This easy strawberry shrub drink recipe makes a fruity, vinegar-based simple syrup that savors the season’s freshest strawberries. You’ll learn how simple it is to make easy strawberry shrubs at home with step-by-step instructions and just 3 ingredients: fresh strawberries, sugar, and apple cider vinegar.
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Making drinks at home is an easy way to use seasonal fruit and herbs. Not only is it less expensive than buying drinks from the store, but they’re often healthier for you. Just like my 3-ingredient lemonade recipe, there are no hard-to-read ingredients, so you can enjoy your beverage with the best ingredient: peace! Knowing your family is enjoying real food.
What is a Shrub?
Shrubs are derived from the word “sharāb”, meaning “to drink”. Sometimes referred to as drinking vinegars or sharab shrubs, this old-fashioned way of making drinks has lately been making a resurgence.
With its origins in colonial America before refrigeration, vinegar was added to fruit and sugar as a way to preserve the fresh fruit. Even though modern refrigeration helps extend the shelf life of fresh fruit, and this type of preservation method isn’t used out of necessity, shrubs aren’t a thing of the past. Today, they’re made for enjoyment for those looking to transition more of their diet to homemade foods, as well as foodies looking for a flavor adventure.
What do Shrubs Taste Like?
Adding sugar to fruit not only sweetens it, but it also draws out the fruit juices, resulting in a fruit simple syrup with a sweet profile, highlighting the fruit. At this point, you could strain out the solids and use the syrup to flavor drinks or drizzle it over pancakes or ice cream.
But shrub recipes take it one step further. Acidifying it makes the sweet, fruity flavor profile more complex. Not only does vinegar add complexity, but it also creates an acidic environment that keeps bacteria and mold from growing, as was its original intent. Typically, apple cider vinegar is used, but you can have fun and use your favorite type of vinegar. It’s an easy way to preserve small amounts of fresh fruit and transform them into a syrup that is good in mocktails, cocktails, pan sauces, and tall glasses of sparkling water.
You might be asking, will it taste like you’re drinking vinegar? It depends. If you like the pungent, sour flavor that vinegars have, add more of it to your shrub. However, if you want to highlight the sweeter flavors, use less vinegar and let the fruit flavor shine.
You can further develop the flavor by infusing different herbs like basil, mint, or lemon balm, and spices like ginger, black pepper, or cardamom.
Why You’ll Love This Strawberry Shrub Recipe
- Flavor – Vinegar syrup has a refreshing and unique flavor and contains 2 of the 5 basic tastes: sweet and sour, stimulating the appetite while quenching thirst too. I love the subtle added depth of flavor they bring to drinks and dishes.
- Preserve – It’s a great way to preserve seasonal fruit and extend how long you enjoy it! In addition, making fruit shrubs reduces food waste and redeems fruit that ripens beyond ideal fresh eating.
- Saves money – Recently, pop alternatives like Poppi or Ollie Pop drink have hit the market and are a smashing success! But they’re quite spendy, especially for a large family like ours. Shrubs mimic the flavors in these popular beverages for a fraction of the price. The best part, you can tailor shrub flavors to create homemade Poppi drinks.
- Easy – With just 3 ingredients, making a shrub couldn’t be simpler to savor on a hot summer day.
Strawberry Shrub Ingredients
- Strawberries – hull and quarter or slice clean strawberries. This is the perfect use for less-than-perfect fruit since it’s the juice you want.
- Sugar – Plain, white sugar or cane sugar is typically used and will give you the purest fruit flavor. However, you can experiment and try other types of sweeteners like honey, brown sugar, agave, maple syrup, or coconut sugar. Consider that the sweetener will impart its flavor to the shrub.
- Vinegar – Shrubs typically use apple cider vinegar, but you can use whatever type of vinegar you enjoy. Try champagne vinegar, white or red wine vinegar, or rice vinegar. Balsamic vinegar is delightful with berries, but you only need a splash. Stay clear of plain white vinegar, as it’s too sharp.
How to Make a Strawberry Shrub Drink
Shrubs are a matter of ratio, with an ideal sweet-tart ratio of 1:1:1, fruit, sugar, and vinegar, with two methods to coax the juice from the fruit. After that point, the straining and acidifying steps are almost identical.
The cold method has a fresh fruit flavor at the expense of time, taking up to 3 days to make.
While the hot process makes quick work to create a shrub drink, you lose the fresh fruit flavor due to the cooking process.
Regardless of which method you choose, both yield about 3 cups of shrub syrup.
Mix the Strawberries, Sugar, and Vinegar
Cold Method
- Add clean strawberries, hulled and quartered, to a large bowl or jar. Add the sugar and stir to coat the fruit. Loosely cover to keep debris out and let it sit at room temperature until the fruit begins to release its juices, roughly 30 minutes to 1 hour.
- Place the bowl and cover in the refrigerator to macerate for up to 24 to 48 hours.
- Line a strainer with a piece of cheesecloth set over a large bowl. Strain out the fruit pulp and discard.
- Measure the fruit syrup and add equal parts vinegar. When adding the vinegar, start slow and taste as you go to find the balance you like.
- Transfer to a bottle with a tight-fitting lid.
Hot Process
- Add equal parts sugar and water to a medium saucepan. Place on the stove over medium heat. While stirring, cook until the sugar dissolves.
- Add clean strawberries, hulled and quartered, to the pan. Simmer until the fruit begins to release its juices and blends well into the syrup. Continue cooking until the berries are spent and the simple syrup is a bright red hue, similar to the strawberries.
- Remove from the heat and let the mixture cool.
- Line a fine-mesh sieve with a piece of cheesecloth set over a large bowl. Strain out the solids and discard.
- Add the vinegar to the syrup and transfer to a bottle with a tight-fitting lid.
Serve
Fill a tall glass with ice, top with a splash of the shrub, and top it off with your favorite type of water. I like to mix 1 part shrub syrup with 4 parts sparkling water. Stir to incorporate the shrub a bit and enjoy!
Store
Transfer the shrub to a bottle or jar with a tight-fitting lid and refrigerate for up to 2 months. (If your homemade shrub lasts this long!) The shrub should not ferment. If it does, toss it and make a new one.
How to Use a Strawberry Shrub
- Create refreshing summer non-alcoholic beverages. Add strawberry shrub syrup with club soda, seltzer water for a refreshing mocktail. If you don’t like bubbly water, simply use flat water or tap water.
- Create a strawberry shrub cocktail. Add a splash of alcohol, or replace the water with champagne or another type of sparkling wine.
- Use strawberry shrub in a homemade sweet salad dressing similar to poppy seed dressing or vinaigrette.
- Drizzle this sweet syrup in a float, over ice cream, pancakes, yogurt, or oatmeal.
Optional Add-ins and Tips
- Create different shrubs with various fruits. Use fresh berries, stone fruits, or pears. Only use the hot process method for fruits you would normally make into jam, and save the cold method for all other types of fruit.
- Adjust sweetness or acidity to your liken. If it’s your first time making a shrub, add the vinegar gradually, tasting along the way until you like the flavor balance. Take note of the syrup-to-vinegar ratio. This ratio might change with different types of fruit.
- Using frozen fruit allows you to expand specific fruit shrubs beyond their typical season.
- Have fun and experiment with different fruit and vinegar combos.
- Take it one step further and infuse herbs into the simple syrup for even more flavor combinations.
I hope you love this strawberry shrub as much as my family does, and I’d love to hear about it! Rate the recipe and leave me a comment on your favorite way to serve it.
Easy Strawberry Shrub Drink Recipe
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Equipment
- bowl
- strainer
- cheesecloth
- bottle or jar with tight fitting lid
- measuring cup
Ingredients
Cold Method Shrub
- 1 lbs strawberries
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups apple cider vinegar
Hot Process Shrub
- 1 lbs strawberries
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup apple cidar vinegar
Instructions
Gather Ingredients
- The cold method has a fresh fruit flavor at the expense of time, taking up to 3 days to make.
- While the hot process makes quick work to create a shrub drink, you lose the fresh fruit flavor due to the cooking process.
- Shrubs are a matter of ratio, with an ideal sweet-tart ratio of 1:1:1 fruit sugar and vinegar.
Mix the Fruit, Sugar, and Vinegar
Cold Method
- Add clean strawberries, hulled and quartered, to a large bowl or jar. Add the sugar and stir to coat the fruit. Loosely cover to keep debris out and let it sit at room temperature until the fruit begins to release its juices, roughly 30 minutes to 1 hour.
- Place the bowl and cover in the refrigerator to macerate for up to 24 to 48 hours.
- Line a strainer with a piece of cheesecloth set over a large bowl. Strain out the fruit pulp and discard.
- Measure the fruit syrup and add equal parts vinegar. When adding the vinegar, start slow and taste as you go to find the balance you like.
- Transfer to a bottle with a tight-fitting lid.
- Store in the refrigerator up to 2 months.
Hot Process
- Add equal parts sugar and water to a medium saucepan. Place on the stove over medium heat. While stirring, cook until the sugar dissolves.
- Add clean strawberries, hulled and quartered, to the pan. Simmer until the fruit begins to release its juices and blends well into the syrup. Continue cooking until the berries are spent and the simple syrup is a bright red hue, similar to the strawberries.
- Remove from the heat and let the mixture cool.
- Line a fine-mesh sieve with a piece of cheesecloth set over a large bowl. Strain out the solids.
- Add the vinegar to the syrup and transfer to a bottle with a tight-fitting lid.
- Store in the refrigerator up to 2 months.
Serve
- Fill a tall glass with ice, top with a splash of the shrub, and top it off with your favorite type of water. I like to mix 1 part shrub syrup with 4 parts sparkling water. Stir to incorporate the shrub a bit and enjoy!
I love strawberry flavor, and this shrub captures it beautifully! Add some bubbles and sip away, by the pool or on your errand run! I look forward to hearing how you enjoyed it, and any questions you may have!