i was unbelievably excited about the gift - mainly because in the past few years i've developed quite an affinity to sparkling water, and i was getting tired of buying it all the time. but with it came the ability to make my own soda flavors. so one of the first things i tried was a matcha sparkling water, and also my own ginger ale. after that, i made my own blood orange syrup. out of the three, the blood orange was my favorite.
about a week ago, i was talking to one of my co-workers about the sodastream and making your own flavors instead of buying the ones produced by sodastream. during that conversation, the topic of drinking vinegars (also known was shrubs) came up. shrubs can be made with just about any fruit or fruit juice. it's used in cocktail making, but why not as a flavor for soda? there's a great article on serious eats about making your own shrub syrups.
last night, i decided to make a lemon shrub, using the cold pressed method. citrus juice is better left uncooked. i had some meyer lemons lying around and also regular lemons, so i squeezed them to get one cup of juice. into a glass bowl it went along with one cup of sugar. i stirred it every so often to get the sugar to dissolve. once dissolved, i had a lovely, lemony syrup. the usual ratio of fruit (or juice) to sugar to vinegar is 1:1:1. however, considering that lemons are generally more tart than sweet, i opted to cut the vinegar by half, so i only added a half cup of apple cider vinegar.
this yielded something better than i had imagined. i put a few spoonfuls of this shrub and topped it off with some freshly made sparkling water. it was light, refreshing, with just a hint of sweetness. i'm sure i'll be making this one all year long.
