11 Tips for Sustainable Cocktails | Zero-waste Bartending Made Simple
Bartenders have actively been looking to reduce bar waste. And with consumers becoming more aware of the environment, if you’re not getting involved with sustainable bartending and zero waste cocktails, you’re going to end up stuck in the past.
Sustainable bartending helps for fresher ingredients, a clearer conscience and if you work for a bar. Improved profits and higher GP margins. So, get on board. I mean who doesn’t want to save the planet one tasty guilt free cocktail at a time?
I originally posted this article over a year ago on one of my older websites. At that point, sustainability in drinking had just started really taking off. Since then it has grown and grown and sustainability is now not just a main focus of bars and bartenders, but of home bartenders and large industry drink brands.
It’s also developed into the still relatively new term of mindful drinking. A term used to describe everything from being sustainably conscious of what you drink as well as why you drink and how much you drink.
I’ve already written a guide on mindful drinking and how you can achieve it in 5 simple steps here. So check that out to get fully up to date on mindfulness and sustainability in drinking.
With all that being said, and people still wondering how to be more sustainable, not to mention after the global hit we have all taken recently which has driven home bartenders to up their mixing game. I thought it was due time to update my old sustainability guide and so below is that updated guide with 4 extra tips on how to be more of a zero-waste sustainable bartender, whether professional or home cocktail enthusiast.
What are sustainable cocktails?
Sustainable cocktails are cocktails that are more in harmony with nature. It’s about minimising natural resources and conserving energy.
In a nutshell, it's about throwing away less “leftovers' ' and using the full potential of an ingredient. Finding balance between nature and cocktails.
Because having tasty cocktails is great. And your one singular wasted lime may not affect the planet, but with millions of bars, professional bartenders and home bartenders wasting that one lime each day. Then that’s a lot of wasted fruit!
So how do you become more sustainable with your bartending? How do you create zero-waste cocktails that taste good?
11 Steps to zero-waste, sustainable cocktails
1. Infusions
First things first. The key with zero-waste cocktails is getting the most out of the ingredients you have. Generally, after you have used what you need, the leftovers get thrown in the bin. R.I.P to that ugly strawberry that didn’t quite make it to the garnish.
One thing you can do that will help save and get the most out of them perishing ingredients, is to infuse them into syrups or spirits. The beauty of this is that it doesn’t matter how wonky or ugly they are, as they wont be seen.
If you have the equipment you can distil the perishing ingredients. But that takes some high quality and expensive equipment. However, if you have the money to burn and the knowledge to go along with it. You will end up with some next level cocktails and specific, complex flavours that can be hard to find with commercial spirits.
A simple yet good example of infusing for sustainability is as follows;
So you’re using fresh lime juice in your cocktail. After you have juiced your limes you’re left with a squeezed lime shell. Simply cut it up into chunks and throw it in a jar with vodka. 1 or 2 weeks later you have lime flavoured vodka. You then strain those lime bits out and use them a second time to infuse a sugar syrup and make lime syrup.
A helpful resource for this, is my science your way to infused spirits guide.
2. Don’t Throw Away Wine
Once oxidised, wine can be made into vinegar or reductions for drinks. If you work in a bar with a restaurant. The kitchen would be more than happy to take that week-old wine for sauces or marinade.
White wine syrups work great for gin cocktails and red wine syrups work great for rum and whisky cocktails.
If there's just no rescuing that wine, pour it into a glass, cover the glass with cling film, poke a small hole in the top and voilà! You have a DIY fly trap.
For a great tasting sustainable red wine Negroni - Mix 25ml Gin with 25ml Campari and 25ml of red wine reduction
3. When Life Gives You Lemons
Citrus is more than juice. Damn near 74% of cocktails call for lime or lemon juice (Number based on a guess at 1AM whilst I’m writing this. I originally put 70%, but 74% sounded like I knew what I was talking about) and when creating cocktails, it's your first thought, “which citrus juice will I add to this drink, lime or lemon?” It makes sense, sour is one of the 5 tastes and adding that citrus is crucial for balancing a cocktail.
However, there are more ways to add that acidity without the aid of limes and lemons. You could use Phosphoric Acid, Lactic acid, Citric and Malic Acids, tannins and vinegars, the list goes on. Just take that out-of-date wine we spoke about. Using that acidic wine to create a syrup will give your cocktail that sour taste without the need of limes or lemons with extra complexity added.
Citric and Malic acids are favourites of mine. These organic acids are found naturally in high concentrations in both limes and lemons.
When citric acid is dissolved in water, and you’ll have to play around with the ratios to get it right (Hint, a little goes a long way) then the end product tastes a lot like lemons.
Not to mention it’s a lot cheaper then limes and lemons and lasts a bloody long time.
The one I use is this £18.99 Citric acid from amazon.co.uk
For the USA, I’d recommend this one for $6
Malic acid is a lot softer. More like the acidity found in apples. Both work perfectly for fast paced bars because it cuts down on the amount of work that goes into squeezing 10 bottles worth of lime and lemon juice every week.
The Malic acid I use is this £10.99 one from amazon.co.uk
For the USA, I’d recommend this $14.99 one
A lot of bars who are now leading the sustainability movement are opting for zero lime and lemon cocktails. Instead finding acidity and substitutes in various ways from vinegars to acids to help against the massive citrus fruit waste we see in the industry.
I’d also recommend taking a look at super juice.
However,
If you must use Lemons and Limes. Consider the fruit as a whole. I find that one lime holds about 25ish ml of juice, which means for one 700ml bottle, you need to juice 28 limes and where do they go after you juice them? That’s right, in the bin. Consider peeling your citrus first. It takes a bit longer, however you can use all those citrus peels for infusions, garnishes, dehydrating or oleo-saccharum.
4. Oleo-saccharum
oleo-saccharum simply means sugared oil. It’s produced by coating citrus and other oil-rich fruits in sugar and letting it macerate. Over the space of a day you will notice those sugars will draw out the oils from the fruits creating a sweet oily syrup.
The obvious way of using this is with lime and lemon peels, which creates a complex syrup that's sweet, citric and oily. However, you can really get creative with this. A great way to use this method is with leftover banana skins to create a banana skin syrup.
Quick banana skin Oleo recipe
Add two banana skins to a jar with 300grams of white sugar. Seal the jar and in just over 24 hours you will have an oily syrup. Strain it out and use sparingly in cocktails. Works wonders in rum sours. 50ml Dark rum, 25ml Citric acid solution 10ml Banana skin oleo, 1 egg white. Shake and strain into a chilled Nick and Nora glass.
A great way to unlock the fragrant essential oil within an ingredient.
5. Dehydration
Quirky garnishes that can’t be consumed are just getting thrown away after one use. That’s not sustainable. So, all your cocktail garnishes need to be edible. And perishable ones just won’t last.
What we are seeing now, is a lot of bars deciding to leave their cocktails ungarnished. Not only does this save money but it helps massively on a sustainable level.
Dehydrating fruit will last you a lifetime of edible garnishes, they're easier to keep and they look a whole lot swankier.
This helps if you have a dehydrator but you can always use an oven on a low heat to dehydrate fruits.
If you’re looking for the best dehydrators for bartenders and all the ways you can utalise one, check out my dehydrator guide for drinks.
6. Fermenting
Keeping away from perishable ingredients is great, It’s the easiest way to make zero waste cocktails. If nothing’s going bad, and nothing needs to be thrown away then you’ve cracked sustainable mixology. Well done.
However, sometimes you need to use perishable ingredients, most fruit favourites are perishable, fresh limes, lemons, strawberries etc. So, what do you do once they start to go bad?
One thing you can do is to ferment them leftover ingredients into a sodas, wine or tepache. This is a personal favourite of mine.
Different products will call for different techniques, but the basics are boiling of fruits with sugar and water. Once they cool adding yeast which within tepache happens naturally, and with soda or wine you can easily pick up yeast from Amazon or Wilko. The mix will then ferment and voila! you have home brewed soda or wine.
I have quite a few fermentation recipes here on Smartblend, from tepache to kvass and everything inbetween so check out my fermentation tap here.
Below is an example of an easy fermentation you can do for sustainability.
6 A. Banana wine
At a bar I work in, we see a huge waste in bananas. We buy in bulk and once they darken we throw them out. So what I do is take those bananas home, I let them ripen even more till they are almost black then chop them up including the skins.
I then mix them with litres of water, sugar and white wine yeast and let them ferment. After an initial fermentation I strain out those old bananas and let it ferment some more.
I then bottle and age the banana wine and what would have been a massive bunch of wasted bananas becomes litres of banana wine. Which is very cheap as the main ingredient is water and old bananas that would have been binned. It works perfectly sipped straight from a chilled wine glass or mixed into cocktails.
6 B. Tepache
Another favourite fermentation technique of mine is Tepache. Tepache is something I have already done a full guide on including how to make it, what it is and tepache variations. So I will keep this short.
What is Tepache?
Tepache is a Mexican fermented soda, made with sugar, water, cinnamon and pineapple. The mix naturally ferments over the space of 1 to 2 days into a sparkling, yeasty pineapple soft drink with hints of cinnamon.
Why’s it sustainable?
When it comes to pineapples and drinks. We use the fruit for juices and the leaves for garnishing. The skin is often wasted. In making tepache, it’s the skins of the pineapple that create that delicious drink. So anytime you’re using fresh pineapple in a cocktail. Think about making tepache before you bin those skins.
How to drink?
Once you have your tepache, you can drink it straight over ice or mix it in cocktails. Tequila highballs work brilliantly with tepache.
If you want to learn more about Tepache and how to make it, check out my How to make Tepache | Recipe, what it is and recipe variations post.
7. Grow Your Own Ingredients
As soon as herbs are picked, they begin to lose flavour and die. Sad thought, right?
However, that means if you’re growing your own herbs and cutting out the middleman, the time between picking them and making a drink is vastly shortened. Making for fresher drinks and improved flavours.
But what the hell does this have to do with sustainability you ask. Simple, when growing your own ingredients you only cut the herbs you need to use as opposed to having to buy a whole pre-cut pack.
It also cuts out the packaging, and think of all that packaging involved with herbs. Transporting them, storing them, and keeping them fresh. Cutting that out is a huge waste saver, making for completely zero waste cocktails. Hurrah!
8. Lose the straws
When I first wrote this article, this was the one point on everyones mind. Millions of straws killing sea turtles and filling our oceans every single day. The world was fed up and putting an end to it.
Since then, A ban on single-use plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds has come into force in England.
This has been effective since April 2020, Which makes it illegal for businesses to sell or supply the items. People in England use an estimated 4.7 billion plastic straws, 316 million plastic stirrers and 1.8 billion plastic-stemmed cotton buds each year. And that’s just England according to the BBC.
An exemption will allow hospitals, bars and restaurants to provide plastic straws to people with disabilities or medical conditions that require them.
So now is the time to question convention and consider what else you could use in the place of a straw, sipping through lemon grass for a citrusy edge to that gin sour? A chocolate straw for that mudslide? How about a cinnamon stick for that tiki drink of yours? Bamboo, glass, papaya leaf stems, hollowed out vanilla beans, the list goes on and the possibilities just get quirkier and more inventive.
9. Ice
Do you know what one of the largest energy sucking parts of a bar is? It’s the ice machine. Large cubed ice machines waste about 50 per cent of the water they bring in.
When making a cocktail, you scoop ice out of an ice well. An ice well that’s slowly melting and wasting water, add that ice to a shaker or mixing glass then pour that ice away. It’s a massive waste of water and energy used to create the ice. Draught beer on the other hand uses no ice.
Now you could argue that there is a lot of waste in the making of beer and energy waste in cooling the beer. But generally, if you’re getting beer from a local and sustainable brewery then no matter how hard you try to create a zero waste, sustainable cocktail. It’s going to be very difficult to come close to the sustainability of a nice cold pint.
10. Locality - Farm to Glass
For the most part, the easiest way to become more sustainable in bartending is just to shop more locally.
The whole idea of “Farm to glass” is having ingredients straight from where they are grown to in your drink. It’s effective on so many levels…
Firstly, It’s way more sustainable as there's less packaging involved. Secondly, Fresher ingredients mean fresher, vibrant more flavoursome drinks and lastly, shopping local supports your area and community. With all those pros and the only possible con being it tends to be a tad more expensive, what’s not to love?
11. Sustainable brands
Something that has massively grown since I last wrote this article is sustainable brands. With so many people considering the sustainability of a drink, it forced bartenders to change the way they make drinks, which forced bar owners to shop for more sustainable products, which forced these big industry leading products to create more sustainable products.
And it’s not just the big brands that are changing there ways. It’s inspiring smaller brands to come out with create sustainable products. From Rums made with rainforest water to vermouths made with discarded coffee beans. There are hundreds of brands focusing on planet friendly and supporting products.
So many that it should make you question why you aren’t using them. If they taste just as good as their non sustainable counterparts if not better. Why not swap out your bar or home to only sustainable products?
That way, no matter what drink you mix up it’s going to be supporting the planet in at least one way or another.
Final Note… Balance
Don’t go overboard. Being sustainable is great, but it’s a thin line, “I used this fruit by-product to create a delicious cocktail” sounds great. “I took everything that you would normally throw in the bin and liquefied it so you can drink it” sounds, well… unappealing.
Sustainable bartending is something to do for the environment and well, to save money. Not just because it’s the next cocktail trend. Lets face it, from a bars perspective, being more sustainable almost always leads to saving money.
Keep in mind that cocktails are an indulgence. A way of treating yourself. I’d rather have a beer then liquefied rubbish, as would many people I imagine. Cocktails are expensive after all, especially when compared to the price of a beer or wine. And whilst we are on the subject, let's just talk about beer.
Draught beer to be precise. The only packaging involved is the keg, which suppliers will pick up, clean and re-use. There is no garnish, no straws and the whole thing gets consumed apart from the glass. Which is then washed and then re-used.
A pint will cost you half the price of a cocktail. We choose a cocktail for exciting flavours and a delicious treat. Not because of the sustainability. That’s just something that helps us feel a little more guilt free.
What I’m basically saying is…
Don’t go overboard
Don’t get too caught up on this focus of zero waste. Sometimes, something will have to be wasted to create a great tasting cocktail and that’s alright. It's all about finding the balance of exciting flavours, delicious recipes and waste reduction to create the perfect sustainable cocktail balance.
Being completely sustainable and zero waste as a cocktail enthusiast is difficult. Don’t go overboard and lose the aspect of why we enjoy cocktails. They are delicious, they are a treat, they make us feel good. If being sustainable means losing out on any of them then you need to step back a little. Don’t aim for zero-waste, just aim for better.
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Hi, I’m Cameron, guv’nor of Smartblend. If you liked this then you’re in luck, I have a bunch more recipes like it. I share only vegetarian and pescatarian food recipes, cocktails, and drink guides with a sprinkling of wellness and mindful drinking. If that sounds like you, then stick around!
