Simple, rich and flavored syrups

A syrup is sugar made pourable. That is all, and it is enough to decide whether a Daiquiri sings or sulks. Make syrups by weight, label them, keep them cold, and your sours will taste the same on a Tuesday as they did on Saturday.

What you need

• A kitchen scale that reads in grams.
• Fine white sugar (caster or superfine dissolves fastest), demerara sugar, honey.
• Fresh ginger root and cinnamon sticks for the flavored versions.
• A small saucepan, a whisk, a fine mesh strainer, and a funnel.
• Clean glass bottles with caps. Sterilize them: wash in hot soapy water, rinse, then fill with just-boiled water for 10 minutes and empty.
• Masking tape and a marker for the date.

Why weight, not cups

A cup of water weighs about 240 g. A cup of white sugar weighs about 200 g, and a cup of coarse demerara less again. Measuring "equal parts" by volume gives you a syrup that is a little weaker than you think and varies with the sugar. Equal weights are the same every time.

Steps: 1:1 simple syrup, cold process

1. Weigh 200 g fine sugar and 200 g cold filtered water into a jar.
2. Cap and shake for 2 to 3 minutes, rest 10 minutes, shake again until no grains remain. It stays clear and uncooked.
3. Bottle, date it, refrigerate. Yield about 12 oz / 350 ml.

Steps: 2:1 rich syrup, hot process

1. Weigh 400 g fine sugar and 200 g water into a saucepan.
2. Warm over low heat, stirring, until the liquid is clear. Do not let it boil: boiling drives off water and begins to caramelize the sugar, which changes both the ratio and the taste. Aim for about 160 F (70 C).
3. Cool to room temperature, strain through the fine mesh into a hot sterilized bottle, date it, refrigerate. Yield about 16 oz / 475 ml.
4. Rich syrup is only about a third sweeter than 1:1, not twice as sweet. Where a recipe calls for 0.75 oz / 22 ml of simple, use 0.5 oz / 15 ml of rich.

Steps: rich demerara syrup

Follow the 2:1 hot method with 400 g demerara and 200 g water. The coarse crystals need a little more time and a little more heat to dissolve; keep the whisk moving. The result is amber, with toffee and dried-fruit notes that belong under rye in an Old Fashioned and under cognac in a Sazerac.

Steps: honey syrup, 3:2

1. Weigh 300 g honey and 200 g warm water (about 100 F / 40 C) into a jar.
2. Cap and shake, or stir, until uniform. Never cook honey: Difford's warns that its delicate aromatics break down above 36 C (97 F) and that it should never pass 40 C (104 F).
3. Bottle, date, refrigerate. Ratios from 1:1 to 3:1 honey to water are all in use; 3:2 pours cleanly from a speed pourer and still tastes of honey in a Whiskey Sour variation.

Steps: ginger syrup

The quick simmered method: slice 150 g unpeeled ginger thin, add to 400 g sugar and 400 g water, bring to a bare simmer for 10 minutes, cover, steep 1 hour off the heat, strain and bottle. For a hotter, brighter syrup, follow the bar method Punch traces to Milk and Honey: juice fresh ginger in a juicer (or grate it and press through cloth), then whisk 4 parts ginger juice with 3 parts sugar by weight until the sugar dissolves, with no heat at all. It is sharper and keeps less well.

Steps: cinnamon syrup

Break 4 cinnamon sticks into pieces, add to 400 g sugar and 400 g water, bring to a simmer, hold 5 minutes, cover and steep 2 hours, then strain. Punch's general rule applies: more heat and more time pull more flavor and eventually some bitterness, so taste at 2 hours before deciding whether to leave it overnight.

Shelf life, with and without a splash of spirit

Sugar preserves by binding water. A 2:1 syrup holds far less free water than a 1:1 syrup, which is why Difford's gives rich syrup up to six months refrigerated, and Punch gives plain 1:1 only a few days and 2:1 about a week. Our house rule sits between those figures, so treat it as a ceiling and trust your nose first:

• 1:1 simple, cold made: 2 weeks refrigerated.
• 2:1 rich or demerara: 1 month refrigerated; up to 3 months if the bottle was sterilized and filled hot.
• Honey syrup: 1 week. Honey is stable alone, and unstable once thinned.
• Ginger and cinnamon syrups: 2 weeks. Fresh juice and plant matter shorten everything.

A splash of neutral spirit helps a little. One ounce / 30 ml of 40 percent vodka in 16 oz / 475 ml of syrup brings it to about 2.5 percent alcohol, our arithmetic. That slows yeast and mold and adds no flavor; treat it as a margin of roughly a week, not a guarantee. It is far short of the 12 percent that Punch says will keep a syrup for months, and that level is a liqueur, not a syrup. Do not add spirit to a syrup that will be used in a nonalcoholic drink, and label the bottle so nobody has to guess.

What can go wrong

• Crystals in the bottle. Undissolved grains seeded new crystals. Strain finely, and store rich syrup in the fridge, not the freezer.
• Cloudy, fizzy, or smells of cider. It has begun to ferment. Discard it and sterilize the bottle. Do not taste to confirm.
• Bitter ginger or cinnamon syrup. Steeped too long or simmered too hard. Shorten the steep.
• Honey syrup tastes flat. It was heated. Warm water only.
• Syrup too thin after boiling. Water boiled off and sugar scorched; start again, lower and slower.

Food safety

Syrups are low-acid, high-moisture foods once diluted below 2:1. Refrigerate at or below 40 F (4 C), use clean utensils, never pour back from a jigger, and write the date on every bottle. When in doubt, throw it out.

Sources

• Simon Difford, "How to make sugar syrup" and "Honey syrup", Difford's Guide.
• Proof Cocktails, "Syrups, simple and not so simple", 2017.
• Punch, "Easy techniques to upgrade simple syrup for cocktail recipes", "The essential guide to cocktail sweeteners and syrups", and "The secret to all those ginger drinks".