53 Notes on “Simple Syrups”

1. You can also make a thin caramel, and then add the rest of the water to it to make a caramel sim­ple syrup. I made caramel apple mimosas that way (using sin­gle source apple juice and caramel sim­ple syrup with a min­er­al-heavy cham­pagne.) I like to almost burn the caramel, so that the fla­vor holds up to when the extra water is added.

   For five, very sweet, drinks, I used half of a cup of sug­ar and a table­spoon of water (just enough to get it all wet) and then heat­ed it. The trick is to not stir it, just let it bub­ble away and get good and dark — a rich amber is your best bet. Then turn down the heat and add half a cup of hot water. Stir like mad, turn up the heat a bit, and make sure it all mix­es even­ly. The trick here is to use hot water so that the caramel does­n’t cool and become semi-sol­id.

   The oth­er drink I use this for is an applejack/bourbon/caramel con­trap­tion.

2. I like this culi­nary approach! I’ve made burnt sug­ar for my bit­ters and it def­i­nite­ly made a mess of my cook­ware. I’ve got to try one of your cock­tails includ­ing this tech­nique. This is a great idea for fall and some­thing I should ven­ture into with my cock­tail cre­ations. Thanks Andrew!

3. yo, josh,

   why the shot of vod­ka to fin­ish the sim­ple syrups? does it help make them last three weeks? is it a fla­vor ele­ment? was­sup?

   thanks,
   steve

4. This helps to pre­serve the syrup. Keep in mind most vod­kas are made to taste like noth­ing, woo.

5. I see that you have this down to a sci­ence. The syrup infused with the herbs sound very cre­ative but what do you use it with? Please share this is now to me and I am very inter­est­ed.

   Thanks!

6. Here are a few recipes: http://postprohibition.com/category/recipes/mixer/simple-syrup/
   If you go to my recipe page and click the “more options” but­ton you can sort all my recipes by all kinds of ingre­di­ents.

7. I start­ed infus­ing my sim­ple syrups with fresh rose­mary (4 or 5 sprigs). I use this in one of the best mar­gar­i­tas I have ever had:
   1 shot of decent tequi­la
   juice of 2 limes
   1 shot to 1 shot and a half of the rose­mary sim­ple syrup
   Shake in a cock­tail shak­er until your hand can’t take it any­more.

   Have aspirins ready for the next day because these go down smooth!

8. Love the cre­ativ­i­ty. Nev­er set­tle for the sta­tus quo.

9. “You’ll need [is] water hot enough to melt your sug­ar.” There is no sug­ar melt­ing, it’s increas­ing the abil­i­ty of the water to dis­solve the sug­ar — to cre­ate super sat­u­rat­ed sug­ar-water.

10. You’re right. Not­ed & cor­rect­ed.

11. “A shot of vod­ka to help pre­serve the syrup”…and does it also need to be refrig­er­at­ed? I would love to keep my laven­der sim­ple syrup in a beau­ti­ful bot­tle on dis­play on my counter top.

12. I guess it mat­ters how fast you’ll use it. I always refrig­er­ate mine to make it last longer. If you’re going to use it in a cou­ple of days it should be fine.

13. Will these keep in the freez­er? I’d like to give them as Christ­mas presents, but I’d rather not spend every wak­ing moment of the week before Christ­mas mak­ing them.

14. Sarah-I’ve nev­er tried to freeze my syrups. I’m sure it would work. Give it a try and let me know how it works.

15. Help! I made a sim­ple syrup with two parts sug­ar and one part cof­fee. It taste great. But, after a night in the fridge, it “went back to sug­ar”. Some of the sug­ar re-crys­tal­ized. Any advice on how to pre­vent this? Should I reduce the sug­ar and per­haps add a lit­tle corn starch to thick­en it?

    Thank you.

16. I’m not sure how the sug­ar undis­solved? If you wan­na bind the two maybe try adding a dust­ing (1/16th tea­spoon) of xan­than gum.

17. Fel­low Bar­tenders / Josh,
    I love mak­ing sym­ple syrups and as a chef have been mak­ing them for my bar­tenders for years. As for the sug­ar recrys­tal­iz­ing, sug­ar has two nat­ur­al states it is either a crys­taline sol­id or liq­uid any­one who has ever messed up a batch of can­dy knows that when it starts to crys­tal­ize your pret­ty much S.O.L. The crys­tal­iza­tion of sug­ar is a chain reca­tion caused by hav­ing sug­ar in the crys­tal form inter­act with sug­ar in the liq­uid form and then heat being intro­duced. The eas­i­est way to pre­vent this is to make sure that when your melt­ing your sug­ar that you con­stant­ly wipe off the rim of your pot at the water line and incor­po­rate all the sug­ar so it all melts.
    As for the short shelf life of syrups, I have been adding a bit of cit­ric acid to mine for years (vit­a­min c tablet) about 1 tablet per 750ml and this will dou­ble the shelf life and help sta­bal­ize the col­or so it does­n’t start to brown.
    Thanks and good luck!

18. Thanks Char­lie for the infor­ma­tive com­ment! Vit­a­min c tablets are also great for pre­serv­ing col­or in cer­tain juices like can­taloupe, peach, etc. I also like to vac­u­um pump my syrups, juices, ver­mouths, if pos­si­ble.

19. Just made my first batch of lemon­grass sim­ple syrup. How long will it last if refrig­er­at­ed? Cheers.

20. @ a month

21. What does the 3 weeks in the fridge do for the sim­ple syrups?

22. So, adding 1, 2, or 3 shots of vod­ka how much can the syrup last? How do I make syrup last years?

23. Oh good Lord putting the fall sim­ple syrup in a Saz­er­ac is out of con­trol. Thanks for these.

24. That is odd…I have nev­er seen sug­ar do that in water with­out some form of sol­id base to attach to (thing sci­ence project of mak­ing rock can­dy)… you may not have dis­solved the sug­ar ful­ly.

25. Hi Ken,

    There are a cou­ple of ways to pre­vent crys­tal­liza­tion. If the water has boiled with the sug­ar when prepar­ing the syrup the chances are high­er that the syrup will crys­tallise. So try to stay below boil­ing point. When mak­ing a flavoured syrup (like with herbs) you can boil the water to have a bet­ter extrac­tion of the herbs (or oth­er) and add sug­ar at a lat­er time.

    Anoth­er thing you can do is to use a fine mesh strain­er to make sure there are no sug­ar crys­tals in your syrup. When there is one crys­tal, oth­er crys­tals grow around it.

    When you do have a syrup with sug­ar crys­tals in it, you can leave the bot­tle in hot water and the syrup will become liq­uid again.

    Hope that helps. Cheers.

26. For the Fall Sim­ple Syrup, do you leave the nut­meg whole or chopped? That sounds fan­tas­tic by the way!

27. I usu­al­ly crack the nut­meg open.

28. Hey Man-

    So glad to see peo­ple inter­est­ed in shar­ing knowl­edge its real­ly refresh­ing. I was won­der­ing if there is a secret to using herbs and poten­tial­ly fruit. Like say if you want­ed to do a com­bo of straw­ber­ry basil or rasp­ber­ries and mint or bing cher­ry and rose hip etc. I was just won­der­ing if there is a dif­fer­ent cook time for these items because of the way they break down. Water­mel­on is anoth­er that seems like it would require dif­fer­ent instruc­tion. Thanks in advance!

29. Mikey,
    Great ques­tion. For straw­ber­ries & rasp­ber­ries I would cook them for about 25 min­utes and then use a hand blender to incor­po­rate com­plete­ly. Then strain the syrup through a sieve and cheese­cloth. For soft herbs like basil and mint you want to turn off your heat and let cool a bit and add them for about 5 min­utes then I would blend those also. These herbs will turn brown quick­ly so you can only leave them in for a short while. Also keep in mind they will turn your syrup dif­fer­ent col­ors when blend­ing. I usu­al­ly just add them to my shak­er but if you want to batch a bunch of this stuff that is what I would do. Don’t use the stems for the basil and mint they will make your syrup bit­ter. For water­mel­on that one I would­n’t cook into a syrup. The water­mel­on will get nasty when you cook it. I would go more towards a liqueur with water­mel­on or just use the fresh juice, or mud­dle it. You could eas­i­ly infuse chunks of water­mel­on in an over proof spir­it around 100 proof and suck all the fla­vors out prob­a­bly in a cou­ple days. Then I would just add a sim­ple syrup to it to taste. Hope this helps. Cheers-Josh

30. Is the vod­ka nec­es­sary in your sim­ple syrups? I’d rather not use it. Will it change the “life” of my syrup if I don’t use it? I use my syrups for cook­ing, cof­fee and tea.

31. Mary,
    It is not nec­es­sary to use vod­ka in the sim­ple syrups. Peo­ple always ask me how they can pro­long the shelf life and that is just one way. I like to vac­u­um pump my syrups, that should help. Also, make sure your bot­tles are clean and ster­ile.

32. Ok- So the basics are a lit­tle tri­al and error and watch your cook times. I am going to start doing batch­es tomor­row and will update you. I am just try­ing dif­fer­ent com­bos for house made sodas and cock­tail syrups so I am try­ing to use The Fla­vor Bible to accom­plish this. Talk soon.

33. Josh (et al):

    Hel­lo every­one. I am an old bar ten­der turned mixol­o­gist. I spe­cial­ize in Tiki/Tropical cock­tails, so I make a lot of orgeat, faler­num and oth­er com­plex syrups for my cock­tails.

    Josh, not sure you men­tioned this, but here is a syn­op­tic break­down of the “fla­vors” of the three ‘brown” sug­ars — Demer­era, Turbina­do and Mus­co­v­a­do:

    Demer­ara and Turbina­do are both spun dry in a cen­trifuge to remove excess plant mate­r­i­al and to crys­tal­lize into their hon­ey toned col­or.

    Demer­ara has a nice mild molasses fla­vor.

    “To make demer­ara sug­ar, sug­ar pro­duc­ers press sug­ar cane and steam the juice of the first press­ing to form thick cane syrup. The cane syrup is allowed to dehy­drate, leav­ing behind large gold­en brown crys­tals of sug­ar. Demer­ara sug­ar is not refined, so it has a rich, creamy, molasses-like fla­vor which enhances baked goods. The large grains also remain crunchy through cook­ing, which makes demer­ara sug­ar a great choice of sprin­kled top­ping on scones and sim­i­lar dish­es which might oth­er­wise have a uni­form tex­ture.”

    Lon­don Demer­ara, is a refined sug­ar with added molasses, rather than raw sug­ar. Lon­don Demer­ara retains the crunchy, big grain pro­file of reg­u­lar demer­ara sug­ar

    http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-demerara-sugar.htm

    Turbina­do, has pro­nounced hints of hon­ey. Beyond this dif­fer­ence in fla­vor, this sug­ar is processed the same way Demer­ara sug­ar is processed.

    FYI — Tubi­na­do sug­ar makes an excel­lent BBQ rub for Ribs. It does­n’t cre­ate a carmelized black ‘cas­ing’ over the meat like Mus­co­v­a­do or brown sug­ar does.

    Mus­co­v­a­do sug­ar (a.k.a. Bar­ba­dos sug­ar), is not dried in a cen­trifuge but rather dried under low heat, some­times in the sun. Since the plant mate­r­i­al isn’t sep­a­rat­ed through a cen­trifuge process, this leaves more plant mate­r­i­al in the sug­ar, result­ing in a very strong molasses taste and a sticky and wet con­sis­ten­cy.

    So, when I am craft­ing a Jet Pilot, I use Demer­ara sug­ar as the base for my cin­na­mon syrup…to com­pli­ment the use of Demer­ara rums in the cock­tail. But, when I am con­coct­ing a Navy Grog, I employ a lit­tle Turbina­do sug­ar in my hon­ey mix to help pro­mote the hon­ey fla­vor in the cock­tail.

    Josh, I love your page and the con­ver­stion that it stim­u­lates!

    Cheers & Alo­ha to all!

    Mark

34. Try can­ning. I make up a batch and can in small­er “sin­gle use” jars.

35. Vit­a­min C is ascor­bic acid
    ascor­bic acid and cit­ric acid are two dif­fer­ent com­pounds

36. Thank you for this arti­cle Josh! How would you go about this thick­en­ing a syrup after it is cooled and too thin?

37. I have liq­uid sug­ar in the raw. To make a sour mix, would I need to dilute the liq­uid sug­ar with more water, or just use as is?

38. I’m not sure of dilu­tion rates on store bought sim­ple syrup. If it’s real­ly thick, I would assume it would be 2:1 sug­ar to water. I’m guess­ing it’s 1:1 though and then you should do equal parts with you sour mix.

39. try to use tar­tar­ic acid.will last waaayyy longer.no need for vod­ka then.

40. what would be the water/sugar sub­sti­tute ratio for a low calo­rie syrup made with ste­via? I some­times use the white pow­der type of ste­via for bak­ing but have nev­er used it for a syrup

41. Hi, I was won­der­ing if you could tell me a few items that would help me pre­serve my sim­ple syrup that I use for shaved ice fla­vors. I made a 5 gal­lon batch and was won­der­ing what I could add to make the sim­ple syrup last longer. I would appre­ci­ate your help. Thanks

42. I use up my sim­ple syrups pret­ty quick­ly, so I usu­al­ly don’t add any­thing to pre­serve it. My advice would be to use a 2:1 ratio (high­er sug­ar con­cen­tra­tion makes the syrup more sta­ble) and dis­tilled water. Oth­er than that, cit­ric acid can work well as a nat­ur­al preser­v­a­tive. Some folks add a table­spoon or so of high-proof vod­ka to extend the shelf life of their sim­ple syrups, but that obvi­ous­ly might not be the best solu­tion if you’re using it for shaved ice, rather than cock­tails. Good luck!

43. Great ques­tion. Ste­via has about 30–45 times the sweet­ness of sug­ar, so it requires a much dif­fer­ent ratio — I’d rec­om­mend start­ing off at 3 parts water to 1 part Ste­via, and adjust to your taste as nec­es­sary. Good luck, Mary!

44. Amy: if your syrup is too thin, maybe reheat it and cook it over low heat until it’s reduced and thick­er, or reheat and add more sug­ar.

45. Hi all,
    I have tried mak­ing a gin­ger sim­ple syrup and black pep­per­corn syrup for the fall but the end prod­uct does not have the spici­ness of gin­ger or pep­per I am after. I assume I am cook­ing it out. I have even tried com­bin­ing the two into one syrup for the extra hit of heat; no dice, either. Any advice on how to keep these syrups spicy? Maybe an oleo sac­cha­rum? Is an oleo sac­cha­rum pos­si­ble with pep­per­corns?
    Thanks!

46. Melis­sa, I make a gin­ger syrup by boil­ing my left­over gin­ger pulp (After juic­ing the gin­ger for gin­ger beer) then strain­ing it. In order to make it very strong, I use only a litre of water to prob­a­bly 5–8kgs of gin­ger. Of course you can’t fit that much pulp in a litre, so I put in about a kg at a time, boil it, then run it through a mac­er­at­ing juicer twice. Then put the extract­ed gin­ger water in the pot and boil more pulp. Once I’ve juiced it all, it looks like a mud­dy, brown pud­dle.
    Then I add in reg­u­lar white sug­ar at a 4:1 ratio (very thick tex­ture!), at the end, it’s still quite spicy, but it goes clear amber colour, rather than cloudy.
    So I sug­gest you try using way more gin­ger than can fit in your water, just boil it in batch­es with the same water.
    Also, it’s super hard to keep 400% sug­ar in solu­tion, espe­cial­ly one that already has some gin­ger par­ti­cles in sus­pen­sion too. I use a bit of cit­ric acid, which helps, but I used too much tonight and strange­ly it turned to a thick foam when it was hot, before pre­cip­i­tat­ing.

47. Oh, and you could try mash­ing a chilli pep­per into the water when it’s boil­ing.
    I dropped a Chi­nese red chilli into my gin­ger beer, mashed it up and left it for a week and it was very spicy. It even­tu­al­ly gave me a stom­ach ache.

48. Will the tar­tar­ic acid affect the taste? I’m look­ing for a sim­ple syrup using ste­via for snow cones. Our prob­lem
    Has been find­ing a preser­v­a­tive.

49. Do you know if the cit­ric acid would work in a sim­ple syrup made with ste­via??

50. Awe­some! Thanks so much for shar­ing!

51. Nice. Thank you for shar­ing your knowl­edge.

52. I have just opened a snow cone stand and have been buy­ing con­cen­trat­ed snow cone syrup and mix­ing it myself to make a gal­lon. My ques­tion is if any­body knows why my syrup isn’t very dark in col­or. A lot of the fla­vors are light col­ored and bare­ly even shows up once it poured on the ice. Any infor­ma­tion would be appre­ci­at­ed.

    Thanks,
    Rhon­da

53. The fin­er the gin­ger is the more fla­vor it pro­duces. A piece about the size of your thumb and fin­ger cut into chunks, unpeeled & run thru a mini food proces­sor then sim­mered with water and any sweet­en­er for 45 mins or so comes out strong and deli­cious. Great thread