Cider Vinegar Beverage
Prelude
Some time in late 2022 or early 2023, I discovered a Cider Vinegar sparkling beverage they were selling and it was delicious. However, it seemed quite expensive, considering you could only buy 4 at a time in small red-bull sized aluminum cans. So, I decided to try and make my own. Just a few aisles over, there was a bottle of raw apple cider vinegar. And it just developed from here.
At the time of writing (january 2024), this page hopes to provide a loose outline for the drink I've concocted. This is the sort of recipe to be interpretted, not followed. Improvisation is encourage.
Ingredients
Generally speaking, a cider vinegar beverage has 3 parts: the cider vinegar, the sweetener, and the flavoring. Controlling the proportions is a matter of taste. I have settled on a 4:6:3 ratio for cider:sweeteners:flavoring.
A good tasting cider vinegar is important. Find something that is natural and organic. Heinz is too sterile tasting. I've been using Braggs for a while now, and I highly recommend it.
Sweeteners are typically something like grape juice and apple juice. They are sweet and have a general "neutral" flavor to them. These don't really have much personality, and really only act to balance out the bite of the cider vinegar.
Flavoring is often a juice that adds distinction to the drink. My favorite is this blueberry blackberry acai juice blend I've found in the supermarket. I've used tart cherry juice in the past and that's quite good as well.
Flavoring can also include spices and extracts. I've used ginger, both powdered and fresh (fresh is better obviously). A dash of orange extract adds some good fragrance as well (something like orange bitters I imagine would be an interesting thing to experiment with, though I haven't tried this yet). Finally, there's Jam (yes, Jam.) I've mixed in an organic strawberry jam and it is both a good sweetner and flavoring.
A typical batch of juice concentrate tends to look like this for me:
200 grams apple cider vinegar 150 grams apple juice (sweetener) 150 grams grape juice (sweetener) 150 grams blueberry blackberry acai juice (flavoring) (optional) ~1.5 tablespoons strawberry jam (flavoring) (optional) grated fresh ginger (flavoring) (optional) orange extract (flavoring)
Procedure
If you're not using jam, the ingredients can be mixed together in one go.
If you're using jam, you'll want to make sure the Jam is dissolved in the mixed liquids by heating it on the stove. Throw in the ginger as well and bring to a brief boil.
The juice mixture created is a concentrated meant to be mixed with cold water, either still or sparkling. For carbonated water, I use a sodastream to make the sparkling water. For a single glass, I mix 60 grams of concentrate with a about 120-135 grams water. Add in a dash of orange extract. For non-sparkling still water, I often find myself adding a little more concentrate to make it taste a little less watery.
home | index