Okay, so we all know garnish is important… it adds to the drink, enhancing the flavour and your drinking experience.
We also know that fresh is best. Hands down, fresh beats dehydrated anytime in my opinion, but this is when the dilemma arises for some home drinkers – keeping your garnish fresh. Cut up an orange or a lemon for a quick Monday night G&T and within a couple of days, it’s bad.
I agree you could cut the rest up and freeze to make fruit shaped ice cubes but for some of us, convenience is paramount.
This is where Fruits for Drinks comes in…Their freeze-dried fruits can be kept 9 months and once they come into contact with liquid, rehydrate to give you a fresh garnish.
How does it work?
Well according to their website the fruit is processed in special chambers at -60 °C. The fresh fruit is quickly frozen and then placed in a drying chamber under vacuum.
The freeze-drying process completely removes water from the fruit, while leaving the structure and composition of the raw material intact.
This means that it can effectively preserve the colour, taste, chemical composition, minerals, vitamins volume, and aroma of the fruit, so it is nearly identical to its original.
Are they any good?
The first thing you notice when you open the packet is the smell…it’s fantastic! In our bags, we have lemon, lime and orange and there is a lovely burst of citrus every time you open the packet.
The fruit does have the texture of dehydrated but is a dusty white colour rather than the more golden tones you get from dehydrated fruit.
We first opted for the lemon, picking a suitably citrus gin for it to go with. Within about a minute of pouring tonic over the freeze-dried lemon, it was starting to look fresh and really adding to the drink – far better than traditional dehydrated fruit.
The orange and the lemon faired pretty much the same way, each adding their own citrus notes when added to a G&T.
In conclusion…
I think convenience is key with Fruits for Drinks. They offer an easy way to keep garnishes at home without causing too much waste. The freshness really impresses me, that burst of citrus when you open the bag is fantastic and when they rehydrate they really do look and smell like they were freshly cut. Will this freshness last for the full 9 months? Time will tell, but for now, I’m happy to drop on in my G&T.
I can also see massive potential for these in the bar trade where convenience, speed and quality are important.
Big thanks to Steven from Fruits for Drinks for hooking us up with some samples. If you want to find out more, and check out all the different fruits (the berries really interest me) check out their website here or get social with them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
No Comments