What the heck are shrubs? They aren’t just bushes in your front yard. They are Prohibition Era fruit and vinegar syrups that are SUPER easy to make (truly, they are NO COOK) and you can make them in a jar on your countertop. Read on to learn more!

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When I was thinking of how to introduce the idea of canning to beginners, I opened a really old cookbook of my Gram’s. This Farm Bureau Cookbook had a whole section of beverages that relied on thrift, ease, and harkened back to the time when alcohol was prohibited in the U.S. This section really got my wheels turning. Shrubs were a small portion of this section but boy, were they easy. I realized that if I could modernize the recipes and play around with fresh flavors in the old fashioned methods, it could be such a fun beginner preserve for newbies. Cheers to that, right?!

I started shrub making in earnest and haven’t looked back. Shrubs are a delightful departure from the sticky sweet fare on the grocery store shelf in terms of mixer-offerings, and they are a concentrate: You make them and decant just a tablespoon or two into a glass, and then top with sparkling water, ginger ale, or tonic water, (I always opt for sparkling or plain ice water, honestly) and an optional shot of libation, and ta-da! Farmers market fresh flavor in beautiful colors and flavors that are super easy and delicious.

Learn How to Make Fruit + Vinegar Syrups for Cocktails, Vinaigrettes and More in the Shrubology Ebook. This succinct book of clear instruction, recipes, and photographs will teach you how to make shrubs from all kinds of fruits with a variety of sweeteners and vinegar. You’ll master the techniques for making these versatile, NO-COOK syrups so you will be able to whip them up any time!

Shrubology: Refreshing Homemade Fruit & Vinegar Syrups for Cocktails

You can sign up for the free Shrub Making Course right here!

Making your own shrubs is very easy and the flavor possibilities are endless. Shrubs are becoming a popular mixer for cocktails and mocktails because they are no-cook, simple to create, and a great first preserve. Here are my favorite 7 Easy Shrub Recipes for you!

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7 Easy Shrub Recipes

If you’re not sure what a shrub is, watch the video at the bottom of the post!

Strawberry Pineapple Shrub Recipe

Strawberry Pineapple shrub is an easy preserve that is a perfect cocktail mixer and it elevates sparkling water infinitely. The vinegar and sugar combined with the fruit make a bright and flavorful syrup with very little effort and this is the perfect shrub for beginners because it is simple to make.

Pineapple Core Shrub

In case you are new to the shrub game, shrubs are a very simple type of preserve where fruit or vegetable are preserved in sugar and vinegar on your countertop. If you love the idea of saving a little fruit in a jar on your counter in under 10 minutes for use in cocktails, sparkling water, salad dressing, yogurt, and more.

Rhubarb Pineapple Balsamic Shrub

Rhubarb is one of my favorite veggies. I love the color, the flavor, and how delicious it is in a pie, crisp, and canned into jam or syrup. It is pretty easy to get 1 3/4 cup chopped rhubarb; even a new gardener can cultivate this amount. It is also available in grocery stores. Just be sure to be careful with the leaves as they are poisonous.

Blood Orange Balsamic Shrub

Blood Orange Balsamic Shrub is a shrub I have crafted with balsamic vinegar. The other recipes I have shared use apple cider vinegar and that is a much more mild tasting vinegar. Balsamic is bold both in flavor and in color and when added with blood oranges and plain white sugar it creates a strong but delicious shrub. This mixes so, so well with unflavored sparkling water and in a cocktail with bourbon.

Ready to dive into making these shrubs on your own, without a recipe?

Take the FREE Shrub Email Course!

Apple Shrub

Apple Shrub is a great recipe because it takes just one apple of any variety, is fun to spice up with cinnamon or a few dissolved red-hot candies, and mixed with whiskey. It is a cocktail that will transition your beverage game right into autumn.

Grapefruit Shrub

Here is a beautiful, pink, fresh tasting shrub recipe that is easy and uses a vinegar I haven’t showcased before: champagne vinegar. Read on for the recipe!

Honeyed Strawberry Shrub

A shrub is one of the simplest types of preserve. I have fallen in love with them and I want you to come along with me. There’s no hot water bath, no fermentation bubbles (though those would be exciting!) and the only real virtue required is patience. It takes about a week on the countertop for this beginner-friendly preserve but the results are so worth it. Shrubs are an excellent addition to water (and really, who is drinking enough? Not me…) and are sublime when added to a cocktail.

Recommended for You: Shrubology 

Making your own shrubs is very easy and the flavor possibilities are endless. Shrubs are becoming a popular mixer for cocktails and mocktails because they are no-cook, simple to create, and a great first preserve. Here are my favorite 5 Easy Shrub Recipes for you!

This post contains affiliate links.

5 Easy Shrub Recipes

Strawberry Pineapple Shrub Recipe

Strawberry Pineapple shrub is an easy preserve that is a perfect cocktail mixer and it elevates sparkling water infinitely. The vinegar and sugar combined with the fruit make a bright and flavorful syrup with very little effort and this is the perfect shrub for beginners because it is simple to make.

Pineapple Core Shrub

In case you are new to the shrub game, shrubs are a very simple type of preserve where fruit or vegetable are preserved in sugar and vinegar on your countertop. If you love the idea of saving a little fruit in a jar on your counter in under 10 minutes for use in cocktails, sparkling water, salad dressing, yogurt, and more.

Rhubarb Pineapple Balsamic Shrub

Rhubarb is one of my favorite veggies. I love the color, the flavor, and how delicious it is in a pie, crisp, and canned into jam or syrup. It is pretty easy to get 1 3/4 cup chopped rhubarb; even a new gardener can cultivate this amount. It is also available in grocery stores. Just be sure to be careful with the leaves as they are poisonous.

Ready to learn how to make a shrub out of nearly any fruit? Dive into my free little email course on how to make shrubs! I’ll teach you the ratio of sweetener to fruit that works no matter what you’ve picked from the berry patch or have leftover in your fridge, and the course gives you great options for alternative sweeteners and vinegar ideas to let your culinary creativity run wild! Did I mention this is a FREE email series?! Sign up here!

Blood Orange Balsamic Shrub

Blood Orange Balsamic Shrub is a shrub I have crafted with balsamic vinegar. The other recipes I have shared use apple cider vinegar and that is a much more mild tasting vinegar. Balsamic is bold both in flavor and in color and when added with blood oranges and plain white sugar it creates a strong but delicious shrub. This mixes so, so well with unflavored sparkling water and in a cocktail with bourbon.

Apple Shrub

Apple Shrub is a great recipe because it takes just one apple of any variety, is fun to spice up with cinnamon or a few dissolved red-hot candies, and mixed with whiskey. It is a cocktail that will transition your beverage game right into autumn.

These are my favorite recipes to get a newbie in the shrub world started. If you want to get ALL my shrub recipes and complete instruction and my pro tips in ONE spot, check out my ebook,

Shrubology: Refreshing Homemade Fruit and Vinegar Syrups for Cocktails

You can get the ebook on AMAZON (fancy fancy I know! 😉 here! Thanks for leaving a review, Amazon shopper!

And if you aren’t an Amazon shopper, you can get it here as well!

Happy Cocktailing, Wildflowers!

This post shares my latest ebook that shares homemade cocktail mixer recipes & tutorials with beautiful color photographs that will help you learn to prepare drinks quickly and easily for your guests. Read on for farmer’s market fresh flavor and jewel-colored drinks, Wildflowers!

Knowing what to serve a crowd of guests, or what to bring when invited to dinner used to stress me out big time. I used to fret over what bottle of wine to bring (boring, and I usually chose based on the cute label) and I  ended up feeling like a total failure as a guest and host. It sounds really silly, but it is 100% true. I wasn’t raised in a home of people that ‘entertained’; my mom was a waitress from age 14 till she married my dad and my first (and many jobs thereafter) job was waitressing (which served me very, very well, I might add) and we ‘waitress’ much more than we entertain. We prepare food, we serve, we bus tables, we clean, and we keep an eye on the clock the whole time. This left me feeling efficient, but not very much like a welcoming, at ease hostess. I wanted to be like the gals I read about in magazines; laughing with friends, holding a pretty drink, with dinner warm but done cooking on the stove. I didn’t need the spotless countertops, nor the immaculate floors, and I have great friends and I can cook. But the whole hostess with the most-ess thing eluded me for quite a while. 

One day, when I was scouring an old Farm Journal cookbook for canning inspiration, I came upon a chapter about shrubs, and a whole new world of hostessing possibilities opened up to me. I learned that simple, farmer’s market-fresh flavors, and easy recipes are the key to serving guests beverages that make them feel at ease and welcome. Since reading that chapter a couple years ago, I’ve written over 2 dozen recipes in the cocktail mixer category, and really specialized in homemade cocktail mixers. 

These cocktail mixers that I’ve made and written about are the easiest types of preserves and I also knew that my audience (you Wildflowers!) who are interested in DIY, in canning, and in other homemade food and crafts, would love them and love them you have.

So, I put over 20 of the best homemade cocktail mixer recipes into an ebook for you all.

The ebook has both recipes for the mixers and recipes for how to combine the mixers with your favorite libations into grownup cocktails, color photographs that are SO gorgeous (big thank you to Circle Bar Photography!), and complete tutorials for how to make homemade cocktail mixers.

Buy Now!

Because one special thing that I want ALL my readers to have access to is this AMAZING Mixology Matrix- my friend Elisa from www.mealplanningblueprints.com not only helps mamas plan dinner time without the headache, she also helps me create beautiful printables like these.

I asked her to help me create a guide for how to help a gal who is new to hostessing, new to serving company a way to pull together whatever might be in the fridge, whatever she might be able to grab from the market on her way home, and combine it into simple but delicious drinks. This matrix is exactly that; It will help you mix classic, contemporary, & culinary-themed drinks using ingredients you can get in any grocery store (and not the world’s most expensive, fanciest grocery store, either).

This is the Mixology Matrix.

The Mixology Matrix will help you craft homemade cocktails that are classic, culinary, and contemporary with just a few simple ingredients. It’s printable, beautiful, and oh-so-useful.

Download your own -for FREE- right here!