Keep It Simple, Syrup

My Cocktail Kryptonite

When Bitters and I started down this cocktail blog rabbit hole, I had surreptitiously sworn off any drink recipe that required me to make a simple syrup. What? You want me to cook? Again? After I cooked dinner? No thanks. I'm good.

Doctor's orders: Penicillin Riff No. 2, this time with bourbon.

I thought this would be fairly easy to avoid, perhaps naively, since I'm not a fan of overtly-sweet drinks. However, I will admit this resolve lasted only a couple of months before I broke down one night and heated up some sugar and water in a small sauce pan with some fresh ginger and thyme thrown in. Turns out, making your own simple syrup is not only, well, simple, but with the number of flavors you can toss in, very versatile too! 

But I kept running into the same issue—now that I've got a cup of this flavored sweet stuff, and a recipe that only calls for 1/4 oz of it, what the heck do I do with the rest of it? 

Have no fear! Do not let this conundrum hold you back from giving a go at a simple. Below we will give you the recipe for a basic honey ginger simple called for in the Penicillin cocktail as well as a couple other cocktail recipes you can use it in before it goes bad, in a week or two.

Simple Ratio and Storage

Your basic simple syrup recipe has a 1:1 ratio of water to sweetener. This can vary depending on the sweetener your using, and pretty much all the recipes I've seen start out with one cup of water. Well, that's great if you're batching a recipe for a party, but quite a lot to get through by yourself, especially when most recipes call for a half oz. or less. 

I generally start by halving this; half cup water, half cup sweetener, which yields around 4–5 oz of syrup, and then store it in an old jam jar in the fridge. Straight syrup will last 4-6 weeks like this, while flavored ones last only 1-2 weeks.

Honey Ginger Syrup

1/2 cup water

Honey-Ginger: Peel it, slice it, pour it, boil it, steep it, use it.

1/2 cup honey

3" piece of fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced

Heat the water, honey, and ginger in a sauce pan over medium high heat, let boil for a few minutes then reduce to medium for a few more minutes. Best if you can let it steep over night in the fridge, but if you're like me and planning your cocktail a day in advance sounds plain ol' ludicrous, it's got pretty good ginger flavor after ten minutes of steeping. Just use what you need that night, let the ginger steep in the jar over night and remove the next day. 

Penicillin & Variations

2 oz. blended scotch whisky

3/4 oz. fresh lemon juice

3/4 oz. honey-ginger syrup

1/4 oz. single-malt scotch

Combine whisky, lemon juice, and honey-ginger syrup in a shaker over ice and shake. Strain and pour into tumbler glass with fresh ice. Top off with 1/4 oz of good single malt scotch, something smokey or peaty preferred. Garnish with candied ginger on a toothpick.

Riff 1: I recently had a mezcal+Ancho Reyes riff on this out at The Partisan which made it like a fancy, ginger margarita. 

Riff 2: Over at a friends house the other night I brought the scotch, lemon, and honey-ginger, and we used a bourbon they had when no blended scotch whiskey was to be found. It was divine!

Versatile honey-ginger plays well with rum and applejack!

Plantation Mule

2 oz. Rhum Barbancourt 5 Star Reserve Speciale

1 oz. Laird's Applejack

1 oz. lime juice

1/2 oz. honey-ginger syrup

Shake all ingredients over ice, strain into coupe or martini glass, garnish with lime twist

The next obvious evolution here would be to riff on a more straight forward Moscow Mule. But since I'm not a big vodka fan feel free to sub in genever.

Moscow or Dutch Pony

2 oz. vodka or genever

1 oz. lime juice

3/4 oz. honey-ginger syrup

soda water

Sorry Vodka, not sorry.

Combine vodka or genever, lime juice, and honey-ginger syrup over ice and shake. Strain and pour into rocks glass over fresh ice, top off with soda water. You are basically making your own ginger beer here, so play with how much syrup you like in this one. 

Let us know if you come up with any more uses for the honey-ginger syrup. The possibilities are 'simply' endless.  

By Julz Vivalo