Mint sparkling water, three ways
The unsweetened infusion, the syrup, and the ratio that makes the finished drink.
In season: Year-round in stores and unstoppable in a garden from May to first frost. Spearmint is what nearly every recipe means. Peppermint is stronger and reads as candy in a glass of water.
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Infused, unsweetened
Use
1 loosely packed cup of mint leaves, stems removed, per 1 litre
Method
Pull the leaves off the stems. Clap them once between your palms to wake the oils, then drop them into cold still water and refrigerate. Muddling them to pulp releases chlorophyll and the water ends up tasting like cut grass.
Time
1 hour for a clean lift, 2 hours at the outside. Mint is the fastest infusion in this section and also the fastest to turn.
Sparkling
Still water for the steep. Leaves in carbonated water flatten it and go black where they sit against the surface.
Keeps
2 days refrigerated with the leaves out at 2 hours. Leaves left in overnight go black and the water tastes vegetal by morning.
The syrup
Ratio
1 cup sugar : 1 cup water : 1 packed cup mint leaves
Method
Heat the sugar and water until the sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes. Take it fully off the heat, wait 2 minutes for it to drop off the boil, then add the mint and cover. Steep 20 minutes. Strain without pressing.
Keeps
2 weeks refrigerated. The colour turns from green to olive around day five and the flavour outlasts the colour.
Note
For green that holds, blanch the leaves 15 seconds in boiling water and drop them straight into ice water before they go into the syrup. That fixes the chlorophyll and the syrup stays green for two weeks.
The finished soda
1 part syrup to 5 parts sparkling water over ice, with lime
Mint is dominant, so it goes thinner than fruit syrups. Slap a fresh sprig against your palm and drop it in at the end for the smell rather than the taste.
The shrub version
Mint has no flesh to macerate, so it rides along. Add 1/2 cup of leaves to a strawberry or cucumber shrub for the final 24 hours of the rest, then strain them out.
What doesn't work: Pouring boiling syrup straight onto mint. It cooks the leaves, the syrup tastes like spinach water, and it browns within a day. The other failure is muddling the leaves hard in the bottom of a pitcher because that is what bartenders do to a mojito. A mojito gets muddled and drunk inside three minutes. A pitcher sits for hours, and crushed leaves in a pitcher turn it bitter.
Goes with: LimeWatermelonCucumberStrawberryGrapefruit