A Critical Change to the Home Bar
Making simple syrup is so...well...simple - so why does it annoy me so much?
Over 2 years ago (!!!) I did a deep-dive into “the best sugar for simple syrup” in pursuit of my House Old Fashioned. Turbinado Syrup has lived in my home bar list ever since, and I would like to apologize to all of you for the simple fact that it’s the wrong syrup on the list.
It’s wrong because I committed a cardinal sin against my whole vibe here which I will roughly describe as:
Making excellent cocktails with ingredients readily available in any home bar (and getting a better understanding of those ingredients along the way)
So why did I take as given at the time that you had to make syrup for a good cocktail? Yes, most premade simple syrup sucks and homemade is way better. But that is not the only syrup available for purchase. And to make matters worse, I overlooked a key part of my own heritage in my pursuit of perfection. Today, I right this wrong.
A Simpler Syrup
Mixing even parts sugar and water over low heat occasionally is, as cocktail prep goes, extremely simple - the name is accurate. BUT! You have to manage where to store it, you have to let it cool before you use it, and you have to manage a much smaller liquid inventory unit than just about anything else in your home bar.
The only other “prep” items in the home bar are citrus juices, and you can squeeze those fresh directly into the shaker. Simple syrup takes true preparation, and to be honest with you I’ve always been terrible at staying on top of it. What I’m much better at keeping inventory of in the fridge is a different syrup that I don’t have to make: maple syrup.
Time for (Sugar) Camp
I grew up in the middle of nowhere. There were corn fields and maple trees as far as the eye could see. My extended family owned a large acreage of maple trees, and there was a sugar camp there that we’d go to every year. Timing varies, but it’s probably right around now that we’d be heading there.
I’m not even sure if that camp exists anymore. It’s not on this list, but you can get a great idea of the vibes from those pictures. And those vibes were always excellent.
The general idea is that you get very watery liquid out of the maple trees when you tap them, and the camp exists as a big ol’ boiler to get water out and leave you with good, true syrup. There are grades and differences among them, but in general you want to get to an amber color and that’s what you want on your pancakes. If you think we weren’t making pancakes and pouring the fresh hot syrup directly on them in the woods, c’mon now. It was awesome.
Constant Supply
I don’t know how the details worked, but generally everything we made was sold into a collective and “provenance” to our specific camp wasn’t readily available with what you could go buy. Like how Dairy Farmers of America works, but (I think) way less powerful and shady.1
But, we’d always have our own family stash of what we know we made. For our “branch,” though, my grandpa hoarded the stuff. He had a tiny bottle that he’d refill from the larger formats and take it with him literally everywhere he went. The man went out to breakfast nearly every day of his life (or at least all of them that I was around for) and when his side of pancakes arrived he’d quickly eschew the warmed syrup they came with and grab his own bottle. It was hilarious, ornery, and one of my favorite consistent memories of the man. I should have brought it up when I spoke at his funeral. Mary still brings it up on a regular basis.
I do not, today, pay much attention to the provenance of the syrup I buy. Maybe I should. But the Kirkland Signature Grade A Amber has been a constant presence in my fridge since I’ve had a fridge and it does the trick to drizzle on any manner of oatmeals, waffles, and pancakes.
Mixing In
With the baby, I’ve been even worse about managing our simple syrup inventory. So when the Old Fashioned hankering hits, for the last several months I’ve been grabbing my maple syrup instead. And the drink is great. I suppose if you really squint when they’re side-by-side you could tell a difference, but overall the maple profile closely matches the turbinado simple and the structure of the drink still works.
There may be times when I need to change the ratio, and I’ll update those as I go on the post and in the recipe database. But right now, as best I can tell, adding in maple syrup instead of turbinado simple in the same amount will still yield a great cocktail. No prep required, a little more personality included.
That’s at least true in the US. I’ve heard stories about the Canadian Maple Syrup cartel that may be apocryphal, but I buy that they can often act like the mob