Pickle Cocktails | Seasonal Cocktails | Syrups | Bitters

Pickle Cocktails | Seasonal Cocktails | Syrups | Bitters

Recipes for Pickle Cocktails | Seasonal Cocktails | Syrups | Bitters. Peck of pickles cocktails are craft or bespoke made using fresh in season fruit and vegetables preserved as homemade quick pickles and heat treated pickles, pickle brines, and shrub syrups, or drinking vinegars. Pickles and shrubs work as a souring agent and flavour intensifier in cocktails. I also make my own handcrafted bitters and cocktail syrups using seasonal produce for more sustainable cocktails.

Pickles as souring and flavouring agents for cocktails
Pickles, brines and shrub syrup drinking vinegars are useful in cocktails as souring and flavouring agents that offer complex flavours beyond that available from fresh fruit juices and vinegars alone. Pickles and shrubs have a:

  1. Sweet-sour flavour profile usesful as a souring agent in cocktails; and
  2. Strengthen and intensify flavours of in season fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices through flavour pairing and aging.

Pickling and shrub making rely on flavour pairings of fruit and vegetables with herbs and spice mixes, vinegars and sweeteners such as sugar and honey to create unique flavours that enhance the fresh produce and preserve it at the same time.

“I see pickle cocktails as amazing seasonal flavour pairing experiments.”

Families of pickle cocktails
The pickle cocktail method of souring and flavour intensifying can be used across a range of families of cocktails.

1. Pickle twists on classic cocktails
Classic cocktails with a spirit forward flavour profile can be given a pickle twist such as:

2. Pickle sours
Sours using rum (daiquiris), tequila (margaritas) and whiskey (whiskey sours) all work wonderfully with vinegar in pickles and shrubs as a souring agent:

3. Pickle smashes
Cocktails using the smash method where ingredients are muddled and then combined with a base spirit or bubbles such as champagne are delicious with shrubs:

4. Pickle punch-style drinks
Punch-style cocktails include sour, sweet, strong, weak and spice elements and pickles are especially useful as a souring agent and a means of adding complex flavours and spices to this style of drinks such as:

5. Pickle posset-style drinks
Posset-style drinks  include cocktails that are related to the medieval posset which combined milk or cream and fortified wine or ale and spices; and later cream, sugar and eggs. Posset-style drinks include flips containing eggs. Pickles can be used to add spices, complex depth of flavour and delicious garnishes such as for the:

Seasonal cocktails

Seasonal cocktails make use of in season fruits and vegetables offering more sustainable cocktails: