When people try to make spicy cocktails, the flavour can fall short. The problem isn’t the heat, it’s how the heat is incorporated into the cocktail. Infusing jalapeno peppers into tequila is perfect if you want a tequila drink. However, simply putting commercial hot sauces into a cocktail usually throws off the cocktails balance. Shrubs are classically refreshing fruit and vinegar-based syrups that were sweetened and diluted to make a beverage since revolutionary times. Instead of making a berry shrub or an orange shrub, why not make a hot pepper shrub? They fortified the shrub with alcohol (to better extract the flavours from the spices) and made it much more concentrated, so you only need to use drops instead of ounces to get the desired effect which, in this case, is a good ol bit of heat. Related
