Summer season is ripe for watermelon drinks. From Margaritas to coolers, the fruit graces seasonal cocktail menus yearly with out fail. Regardless of being a key factor in lots of easy-drinking cocktails, although, the ingredient is extra finicky than one may think. “The pink flesh doesn’t sit properly in drinks,” says Kelsey Ramage, of the sustainability-minded Trash Collective, describing the way in which watermelon’s “pink scum” tends to drift atop drinks. Plus, juicing or incorporating the flesh of the fruit leaves the rind behind as waste.
Alongside comparable traces, as soon as a pineapple has been juiced for a Piña Colada, and its fronds have been deployed as a crowning garnish, the spiky remnants of the peel are sometimes discarded—however there’s nonetheless loads of fruit left behind.
With watermelons and pineapples, these inexperienced odds and ends current a chance to create a wholly new cocktail ingredient, ideally suited for upgrading sours, highballs and extra.
Ramage’s Watermelon Rind Cordial, made merely with the rinds and sugar, is simpler to combine into drinks than the fruit of a watermelon. Her Inexperienced Pineapple Cordial, in the meantime, is manufactured from the spent peels, blended with water, sugar and basil. Each recipes create verdant sweeteners that squeeze out the final bits of life in the summertime fruit.
Primarily based on how a lot flesh is left on a rind, the cordials can tackle totally different taste profiles. Extra flesh yields a taste akin to every fruit’s typical sweet-tart character, whereas much less flesh brings out a grassy, barely vegetal facet. Even the cordials’ hues—inexperienced from the chlorophyll within the rinds —supply a brand new perspective on the sometimes golden pineapple or vibrant pink watermelon.
Although it doesn’t operate as an actual one-for-one swap for recent juice, the inventory definitely has its place within the canon of escapist drinks. Substituted for easy syrup or Demerara syrup, pineapple cordial simply amps up a run-of-the-mill Jungle Hen or Ti’ Punch, for instance.
Ramage factors out that gin- or tequila-based cocktails would complement the cordials’ inexperienced grassy notes, as would terroir-driven spirits like rhum agricole. In her personal cocktail, the Chairs Up Daiq, Ramage pairs the spirit with the pineapple cordial, alongside lemon juice and orange bitters.
“It’d make a very cool Margarita,” she says, noting one other advantage of a cordial, versus juice. “Watermelon juice is admittedly unstable; it doesn’t maintain up in a batch in any respect, because the alcohol appears to burn the fragile taste.” Cordial tends to carry up higher, although it’s nonetheless finest used inside 24 hours.
For one thing even easier and at a decrease ABV, Ramage affords a last suggestion: “You might add a little bit of sherry in there and make your self a day spritz.”
