IVBalance and structure
Syrups and house ingredients
Simple syrup and the rest. What every recipe asks for and never explains.
5 min read
Sugar doesn't dissolve in a cold drink. Syrup exists to get around that: dissolve it in advance, in hot water, and it mixes in a shaker instead of sitting on the bottom of the glass.
Simple syrup
Sugar and water, warmed until clear. Two ratios are in common use:
| Ratio | Called | Behaves like |
|---|---|---|
| 1 : 1 by volume | Simple, or plain | What most recipes assume. Sweetens without adding much body. |
| 2 : 1 sugar to water | Rich | Twice the sweetness per millilitre and noticeably thicker. Use about half as much. |
Rich syrup keeps longer, because the sugar concentration itself stops things growing in it, and it takes up half the fridge space. If a spec was written for 1 : 1 and you have rich, halve the quantity and add a splash of water back.
The other syrups
- Rich demerara - 2 : 1 with demerara sugar. Molasses character. Goes into anything aged: Old Fashioned, tiki, rum drinks.
- Honey syrup - 3 : 1 honey to warm water, because neat honey seizes in a cold shaker.
- Agave syrup - 3 : 1 with warm water, like the honey. The default sweetener for tequila and mezcal drinks.
- Grenadine - pomegranate, not the red chemical sweetener sold under the name. Equal parts pomegranate juice and sugar, and much better than the bought one.
- Orgeat - almond and orange flower. Fiddly, and essential to a Mai Tai.
- Oleo saccharum - citrus peels buried in sugar for a few hours. The sugar draws the oil out of the peel and you get an intensely citrus syrup from fruit you were going to throw away.
Keeping them
Fridge, labelled, dated. A 1 : 1 syrup lasts about a month; a 2 : 1 keeps for several. A splash of high-proof vodka extends both. Anything with fresh fruit or dairy in it's a few days at most.