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What is a Shrub?
Shrub can really be broken down into two different beverages that you may still hear of today. One form of a shrub is a cocktail or drink that was made by mixing vinegar syrup with liquor or a vinegar made to drink. The other was a cocktail made with rum or brandy, sugar, and rinds of citrus fruits. Most of the new age brands are basically drinking vinegars with various adjuncts — typically using a base of apple cider vinegar (ooh, our favorite)! Some companies out there in the beverage market have created refreshing drinks while other push their shrubs as a component of a tasty cocktail.
Are Shrubs Good for You?
Just like apple cider vinegar (ACV), there are some associated benefits to shrubs. Some of the health benefits include enhancing weight loss. stabilizing blood sugars and lowering cholesterol. While these are not fully substantiated, it certainly doesn’t hurt to incorporate shrubs into your drinking routine.
Now that we have the large questions out of the way, we can get to the fun! Let’s go through a few different brands and see what they bring to the table! If you need a refresher on apple cider vinegar visit here.
Quaker City Shrubs
This brand, Quaker City Shrubs, takes its inspiration from the American classic recipes of an aged vinegar, fruit, and sugar. These shrubs are made to be refreshing with a small amount of apple cider vinegar. Their primary flavor is their apple shrub, which is a hard cider alternative and drinks like a “granny smith in a can”. Their other flavors include grapefruit and blackberry, alternatives to radlers and wines, respectively. The best part is that their products are made only with natural flavors, no high fructose corn syrup, only 3g of natural sugar, and have the gluten removed. Another advantage of this product is the ease of use and flexibility in cocktails.
Whenever a recipe calls for a sparkling element with some light sweetness and tart flavor, you can replace that with one of these shrubs. All of Quaker City’s shrubs are light in body and color with a tart taste unfront. They also have a very faint hint of vinegar at the end. The vinegar notes are by no means bad in flavor and, in fact, are refreshing in a sense. The apple shrub does have more of a green apple candy flavor which tastes artificial; however, the flavoring are all natural. The blackberry is stronger in flavor and tartness up front while being truer to the fruit taste.
MOTHER Shrub
This handcrafted shrub company draws inspiration from generations of making fruit vinegars to cure all! They organic and non-GMO ingredients create this unfiltered apple cider vinegar, making it a must on a healthy food list. Flavors include cranberry, black cherry, ginger, grapefruit, and lime. In fact, the MOTHER Shrub brand has won some awards and finds itself well recognized in the Virginia food scene. The best part is the loads of recipes on their website including their take on a mint julep. We listed it below:
MOTHER Shrub (Black Cherry Mint Julep)
2-3 teaspoons black cherry shrub
1 teaspoon simple syrup or
a pinch of sugar
2-3 oz high proof bourbon
a few sprigs of fresh mint leaves
crushed ice
Gently muddle mint, a few teaspoons of MOTHER Black Cherry Shrub and a teaspoon of simple syrup in the bottom of a julep cup. Half-fill cup with crushed ice, add bourbon. Stir. Add more crushed ice if needed. Garnish with mint and cherries.
The Twisted Shrub
Twisted Shrub started in Minneapolis in 2015 and their shrub is a handcrafted apple cider vinegar drink mixer that was designed to add to cocktails. Below is the baseline to adding to drinks from the companies website: “For low-sugar sparkling drinks & sodas, mix 1 oz. shrub to 3-5 oz. sparkling water or club soda. For delicious, zing-filled cocktails, mix 1 oz. shrub, 1 oz. spirit and 2-3 oz. of your favorite mixer like club soda or ginger ale.”
The mantra of the company is to bring the health benefits of apple cider vinegar to our drinking culture. They take just three basic ingredients: apple cider vinegar, real fruits, and 100% cane sugar to make their line of products. This includes flavors such as strawberry lime, pineapple habanero, apple ginger, and more. We will include this shrub in our upcoming shrub-cider cocktails!
