Three cocktail syrups every bartender should know

There’s an easy way for bars and restaurants to capture bright, fresh, seasonal flavors in a glass. Creating housemade syrups is a great way to preserve those delightful aromas that will help your menu stand out. Here, we share the three fundamental types of cocktail syrups, plus best practices for making and using them, so your bar or restaurant will keep customers coming back for more.

This quintessential cocktail ingredient is used to boost flavor and curb bitterness in your drink of choice.

Simple syrup is typically seen in two different varieties — a 1:1 ratio (regular simple) and a 2:1 ratio (rich simple). This means 1 part sugar to 1 part water for regular simple, and 2 parts sugar to 1 part water for rich simple. Many mixologists gravitate toward regular simple syrup as it pours better, mixes quicker, and is more tolerant of bad jiggering (inaccurate measurement) than rich simple syrup.

To dissolve sugar into water, gently heat the two together and stir until clear, being mindful not to let the syrup come to a boil, as this will evaporate too much of the water. After cooling, you’ll have a syrup with a perfectly neutral flavor to sweeten and balance your cocktails. Pro tip: Adding simple syrup to batched cocktails will help your batch stay fresh longer.

Sweetness comes in many forms, and alternative sugars are often used in cocktails to add a distinct flavor or serve as a more natural substitute for refined sugar.

To create even richer syrups with hints of caramel and molasses, you can use turbinado or demerara sugar, two common names for what is essentially unrefined sugar. These are historically made by pressing sugarcane to extract the juice and retain some natural molasses, often referred to as “sugar in the raw.”

Bees provide another tasty alternative to sweeten our cocktails. Although honey is technically already in syrup form, it's so thick that it needs to be cut with water to achieve a mixable consistency. Agave nectar is made from the agave plant and therefore can boost the natural agave flavor in cocktails with tequila or mezcal. Agave nectar is about one and a half times sweeter than white sugar (so less is more) but it is thinner than honey, so its natural syrup form will mix easily.

Similarly, maple syrup can be used for its rich, natural flavor by replacing .75 oz simple syrup with .5 oz maple syrup. Alternatively, when weighed properly, these sugars can be made into syrups with the same sugar content as a 1:1 simple to deliver a consistent dose of sweetness.

Retain the natural flavors of fruits, vegetables, herbs, nuts, and spices in cocktails through syrup infusion.

Sugar acts as a preservative, and blending it with fresh fruit creates a sustainable syrup for consistently adding those flavors into cocktails. For example, blend a quart of fresh raspberries with an equal portion of rich simple syrup, then pass it through a fine strainer or sieve to create a super-fresh raspberry syrup for your next Clover Club.

Vegetables like cucumbers, carrots, or ginger can be run through a masticating juicer, strained, and blended with an equal portion of sugar to incorporate these flavors into cocktails. Fresh herbs also can be easily integrated into a syrup by blanching first (to prevent browning), then blending with simple syrup and straining. Alternatively, cold steeping fresh herbs in simple syrup overnight can achieve similar results.

Baking spices such as cinnamon, allspice, and clove can be easily infused into a syrup when added during the initial heating process and strained once cool.

When experimenting with building cocktails around a particular homemade syrup, it’s a good idea to begin with a fairly neutral canvas. From fragrant flowers reawakening in spring to the warm spices of fall, you’ll be able to recreate these visceral feelings with your seasonal cocktail menu by using creative syrups like these.

With more certified experts than any other wine and spirits distributor in North America, Southern Glazer’s can help you enhance your bar program, refine your cocktail menu, and boost your business’s bottom line. Not working with us yet? Become a customer today.

Keep up with innovators in the beverage industry and join in on the conversation by listening to “Served Up,” hosted by Southern Glazer’s own Bridget Albert, on your favorite podcast platform.