How to Drink Your Way Through Summer Berries
If you’ve ever picked berries, you know how easy it is to pick an insane amount of berries. Every plump fruit needs to be pulled from the vine, and before you know it, you already have apartments full of fruit and big plans. But then you return home and realize that you may have overdone it a little.
I suppose there is technically no such thing as “too many berries.” In addition to just eating them (I love mine with cream), you can make jam, bake all the tarts out of them, or just freeze them to stop the cruel march of time. However, there is such a thing as fatigue, and once you (and your friends) get tired of homemade jam and pie, it’s time to turn to the bottle.
As with any problem – real or imagined – I suggest you have a drink about it. Berries and booze are made for friendship, and there are three very easy ways to introduce them to each other.
Easy: just get confused
Stir half a cup of berries in a shaker and cover them with a tablespoon of sugar. Pour everything out of them, let it mix and soak for a couple of minutes to form a syrup. Taste a little liquid and add more sugar if necessary, as berries can vary in sweetness. Add two ounces of your favorite liquor. I think gin works best with fresh summer berries, but rum is not bad either, especially if you want to add some mint and make a mojito. Add 30 grams of lemon or lime juice, taste and adjust if necessary, then add ice to a shaker and shake until cooled. Strain into a glass filled with crushed ice and top with soda water.
Slightly tricky: bush
The bushes are alcohol-free, but fruit vinegar goes well with drinking. My favorite shrub-making process is the lazy process that requires no cooking and almost no measurements. Just take a pound of fruit and mix it with two glasses of sugar. White sugar does add a sparkle to the berry flavor, but brown sugar can add a little fun. Add herbs if you have them. (Thyme and blackberry are divine.) Mash the fruit with a wooden spoon to break it up, stir to distribute the sugar evenly, then place a tea towel over the bowl and leave for two days, returning once a day to stir.
In a couple of days, you’ll have a ton of juicy berry goodness. Strain, measure the volume, then measure out the same amount of vinegar. Add the vinegar slowly, half a cup at a time, tasting until you reach the desired astringency level. Your bush is ready. Pour it into a nice bottle, then add seltzer water along with two ounces of whatever strong drink you like at the moment.
Not quite advanced: liquor.
If you are a passionate person and want to make a gourmet drink, you should make a crème de mor, not only because of its quirky French name, but also because it is tasty and light. This is a recipe for blackberries, but I don’t understand why the other berries could not have been used. There are many variations on this theme, including a recipe from Serious Eats that uses brandy, but I love this one from A Tipsy Giraffe that uses a whole bottle of red wine. As with our shrub, this requires a little waiting. Start with five cups of red, medium-consistency bottle puree in a large bowl, then cover with a tea towel and let sit for a couple of days. Strain the pulp and seeds (use cheesecloth if necessary), then pour the liquid into a saucepan with half a glass of sugar. Bring everything to a boil, stir to dissolve the sugar, and cook for eight minutes. Allow to cool, stir half a glass of vodka and pour into clean, preferably sterilized bottles. (Can you add more than half a glass of vodka? Could you use Everclear instead of vodka? Yes for both – just be sure to try along the way.)