Easy Fruit Shrub Recipe: How to Make Delicious Drinking Vinegar

Last Updated on August 24, 2025

If you have an abundance of fresh fruit and also enjoy tasty creative drinks, this easy shrub recipe is for you! And if you’re new to shrubs, I think you’ll be quite happy to get acquainted.

Fruit shrubs are sweet and sour natural syrups made with gut-healthy vinegar and are absolutely delicious added to beverages, salad dressing, and more. They’re easy to make with only 3 steps, 3 ingredients, and will last for months in the fridge. We love to make shrubs as a quick and different way to preserve homegrown fruit – or just for fun!

While I used plums in this particular example, our recipe is super flexible. You can make shrubs with just about any type of fresh fruit you fancy: peaches, strawberries… or a combination of a few! Have fun and get creative.

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What Are Shrubs?

Also known as drinking vinegars, a shrub is a concentrated sweet and sour natural syrup – usually made with relatively equal parts of fresh fruit, vinegar, and sugar of choice. (Apple cider vinegar is the most popular and palatable option.) You can also add optional herbs or spices like cinnamon, ginger, basil, mint, and more.

Traditionally created as a way to preserve fruit, shrubs are now a trendy addition to cocktails, mocktails, and other beverages – imparting a wonderful balance of fruity, tart, and tangy flavors. We don’t drink much these days, but love a splash of homemade shrubs in sparkling water, hop water, and even herbal tea.

You can also sip on small amounts of shrubs on their own, similar to taking a “gut shot” of raw apple cider vinegar for the health benefits. There are also several culinary uses we’ll explore at the end of this post!

Benefits of Drinking Vinegars

If you make your fruit shrub with raw apple cider vinegar, it will be loaded with gut-healthy probiotics, acetic acid, and antioxidants. The fresh fruit also adds plenty of antioxidants and vitamins too!

Consuming small amounts of raw apple cider vinegar (ACV) has been linked to a number of health benefits, similar to kombucha. ACV can help slow and improve digestion, reduce blood glucose spikes, lower cholesterol, and support a balanced gut microbiome.

We also like to use honey in our shrubs recipe, which keeps it even more natural and nutritious than using cane sugar. Yet even if you use regular sugar, shrubs are still far more healthy than most super-sweet cocktail mixes or syrups.

For me (a Type 1 Diabetic) I love fancying up my sparkling water with a splash of shrubs, knowing that the vinegar is there to help offset the honey for my blood sugar. On the other hand, shrubs may exacerbate issues for those sensitive to acidic foods (e.g. acid reflux, GERD, IBS or heartburn).

RELATED: Looking for more ways to use fresh fruit? Don’t miss our easy plum jam recipe, low sugar apricot jam, or peach jam without pectin.

Ingredients

Here are some tips about choosing the best ingredients to make fruit shrubs. See amounts in the ‘recipe’ section to follow.

Fresh Ripe Fruit

You can use pretty much any type of fruit to make a shrub, though soft and juicy ones that can easily be muddled will yield the most flavorful results.

That said, the best fruits for shrubs are stone fruit and berries including strawberries, peaches, plums, nectarines, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, or apricots. Feel free to experiment with pears, figs, apples, melons, grapes, pomegranates, cranberries, or other fruit that’s readily available to you! Feel free to mix several types together.

Sugar

Many shrub recipes call for white sugar, though you can also use brown sugar, honey, coconut sugar, or even maple syrup as a sweetener (though maple syrup has a strong distinct flavor that may overpower the fruit). I love to use local honey.

Vinegar

With it’s naturally semi-sweet flavor and awesome health benefits, I recommend using raw apple cider vinegar (we love to use homemade apple cider vinegar when we have it on hand!), though red wine vinegar or white balsamic vinegar is sometimes used in shrub recipes too. Avoid plain white vinegar; it’s too biting and sharp.

Optional additions

There are endless delicious additions you can include in homemade shrubs. Experiment with adding a small amount of one, or a few!

• warming spices like cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, star anise, or cloves
• fresh herbs including mint, lemon balm, thyme, lemon verbena, rosemary, lavender, or basil
• other additions like rhubarb (especially combined with strawberry), vanilla beans or extract, hot chili peppers, lemon or orange zest – which reminds me, we like to drizzle a little homemade jalapeño honey in mocktails too!

Recipe

Most shrub recipes call for approximately equal amounts of sugar, fruit, and vinegar by volume, such as 1 cup of each. However, I like to go a tad lighter on the sugar to let those natural fruit flavors shine!

In this example, we used:

• 2 cups of chopped fresh fruit (about 1 pound)
• 1 cup of honey. Feel free double the honey or sugar if you want it sweeter.
• We’ll add the vinegar at the very end to taste, but we used about 2 cups of apple cider vinegar.
• Optional: We also included several fresh lemon verbena leaves and slices of fresh ginger.

This recipe should yield about 4 to 5 cups of finished shrubs. You can easily halve the recipe if that seems like too much.

Instructions

Step 1: Macerate Fruit and Sugar

When fruit and sugar are mixed and allowed to soak together for a period of time, the sugar helps to soften the fruit, drawing out natural juices and enhancing the flavor as it thickens into a syrup. This process is called maceration.

• Wash and chop your fruit into fairly small pieces. It’s fine to leave the skins on stone fruit, but remove and discard the pits. You can leave small berries whole.
  
  
• Add the chopped fruit to a non-reactive mixing bowl and then pour over the honey, or toss the fruit with your sugar of choice. Also add any optional herbs or spices at this time.
  
  
• Lightly muddle and mash the fruit. Use the back of a large spoon, potato masher, or kraut pounder if you have one.
  
  
• Cover bowl and let it sit at room temperature for several hours. Then transfer to the refrigerator to rest overnight, or for up to three days. Stir once or twice a day if you can remember to.

Step 2: Strain and Press

Once the fruit and sugar has had time to macerate together, it’s time to strain!

• Position a fine mesh strainer over a bowl below (or a regular strainer lined with cheesecloth) and then pour the mixture through.
  
  
• Use a large spoon or other utensil to stir and press the fruit out very well. Or, squeeze the heck out of your cheesecloth! Take your time to extract as much liquid as possible. Also be sure to run the spoon along the underside of the strainer to get all of the good gooey juices that are clinging there too.
  
  
• Discard or compost the leftover fruit bits, or save it to enjoy over ice cream or plain yogurt.

Step 3: Add Vinegar and Bottle

• Transfer the strained fruit syrup from the bowl into a large glass measuring cup and note the volume. (We ended up with about 2.5 cups of strained plum-honey syrup for this batch.)
  
  
• Next, add approximately equal parts vinegar to syrup (e.g. 2 cups of strained syrup and 2 cups of apple cider vinegar) – but do so slowly, tasting as you go. Feel free to use more or less vinegar to adjust to your personal preference, though shrubs made with less vinegar may have a slightly shorter shelf life. Also remember that you’ll most likely be enjoying your shrubs diluted in another beverage, not on its own! Stir well to combine.
  
  
• That’s it! Now transfer your finished fruit shrub into a glass jar or bottle with a lid, and store in the refrigerator. See more notes about storage, shelf life, and how to use shrubs below.

Storage and Shelf Life

Store homemade fruit shrubs in a glass container with an airtight lid in the refrigerator, where they should last for several months. If using a mason jar, I recommend adding a layer of wax paper below the lid or using a BPA-free plastic jar lid since the acidic vinegar will easily corrode a standard metal lid.

Shrubs made with at least equal parts syrup and vinegar can easily last up to 6 months. Those with less vinegar may have a shorter shelf life, while those with even more vinegar could last longer. Signs of spoilage include visible mold, off odors or flavors.

How to Use Fruit Shrubs

To enjoy your new delicious creation, mix in about 1 to 2 tablespoons (1/2 to 1 ounce) of fruit shrub to 6 or 8 ounces of sparkling water, still water, iced tea, or any other cocktail or mocktail of choice. Start light and give it a try – you can always add more! We’ve been drinking them so often, we want to get an at-home carbonator to reduce waste long term.

Beyond beverages, there a number of culinary uses for fruit shrubs too. They can be used to add a sweet-and-sour zing to homemade salad dressing or vinaigrettes, marinades, and other sauces. In lieu of balsamic, I love a drizzle of shrubs with olive oil over a salad of arugula, beets, strawberries, cucumber, goat cheese and pecans (YUM). You could even add drizzle over ice cream or other desserts, or in your morning smoothie.

Alternative Method

Another simple way to make a fruit shrub is to combine relatively equal parts chopped fresh fruit, sugar or honey, and vinegar in a large jar and let it sit in a cool dark location (like your cupboard) for 10 to 14 days, shaking occasionally. Then simply strain off the fruit solids and bottle the finished shrub – much like making homemade fire cider! However, I personally like to use the cold maceration process since it really draws out the maximum juices, natural sugars, and flavor out of the fruit before adding vinegar.

Cheers!

I hope you enjoy this easy recipe. Please let us know and leave a review or comment below! Also feel free to share any of your favorite flavor combinations you come up with. Now go have fun muddling and sipping!

You may also enjoy:

• How to Make Kombucha 101: Kombucha Recipe and Brewing Basics
• Preserving Apples: How to Make Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar
• Easy Fire Cider Recipe: How to Make Homemade Fire Cider
• How to Make Elderberry Syrup with Fresh or Dried Berries