Making all the Syrups: Simple, Grenadine, Orgeat, and more! | How to Drink

There are a lot of recipes for syrups below and you can use these to make great cocktails, or just add some seltzer and enjoy a homemade soda. One of my favorite things to make, and it is nostalgic of my childhood and probably many of yours, is a Shirley Temple.

Shirley Temple:
Juice of one lime (Little less if you don't like it to be so tart
Equal measure Grenadine
3 parts carbonated water

00:00 - Opener
00:29 - Why are we doing this?
01:19 - Simple Syrup
08:02 - Gomme Syrup
09:42 - Fruit Syrups
11:50 - Oleo-Saccharum
14:03 - Grenadine
15:32 - Shirley Temple
16:24 - Orgeat
19:26 - A little treat for you dear viewer
22:04 - Ginger Syrup - the syrup that started it all
25:22 - Closing

Simple Syrup:
2 parts sugar (white, demerara, organic cane - the world is your oyster)
1 part water
Heat until it is clear

Gomme Syrup:
In bowl
Dissolve spoon full of gum acacia in water
In sauce pan
20 parts simple syrup
1 part gum acacia mixture
Heat up to combine

Raspberry Syrup (Cooking Method):
In sauce pan
25 oz. -or- 750 ml. Simple Syrup
6 oz. -or- 750 G. Raspberries
Heat it up
Strain in to bottle

Strawberry Syrup (Infusion Method):
In Canning Jar
1 part sliced strawberries
1 part sugar
Shake it up
Leave for 24 hours or until sugar is mostly dissolved into liquid
Heat up to combine remaining sugar
Strain into bottle

Oleo-Saccharum:
In Canning Jar
2 oz. -or- 57 G sugar
Peels of 1 lemon
Shake it up
Leave for 24 hours or until sugar is mostly dissolved into liquid
Heat up to combine remaining sugar
Strain into bottle

Grenadine:
In sauce pan
1 part pomegranate juice
2 parts sugar
Small pour of pomegranate molasses
Heat to dissolve
6-7 (15 if you are greg) drops of orange blossom water after taking off heat
Funnel into bottle

Orgeat:
1 part almonds
1.5 - 2 parts water
Blend the heck out of it
Put the mixture through a juicer
Filter through a nut milk bag to get the best almond milk
In sauce pan
1 part home made almond milk
2 parts sugar
Heat to combine
Remove from heat
Few drips orange blossom water
Funnel into bottle

Sweet Ginger Syrup:
In sauce pan
1 part water
2 parts sugar
as much ginger as you can get in
Measure and add more water
Simmer until you boil off enough water to get down to your original measurement
Strain into bottle

Hot Ginger Syrup
Use a juicer to juice your ginger
In Blender
3 parts sugar
4 parts ginger juice
Blend until hot and dissolved (can also do this on the stove in a saucepan)
Funnel into bottle

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[howtodrink]

Yes- the picture is a bit off on this one, new systems were being employed for their first flight and the results aren't great.
You can tell by that lovely Magic Spoon part that we've solved them since then. Sorry!

[ThePockySquirrel]

Cocktails aside, knowing how to make fruit syrups has seriously elevated my iced tea game.

[danielshults]

Can we have more “foundational” episodes like this!? I love it! I, and I bet many of us, are trying to build out our bars and have everything we need to make say our 20 must make cocktails at anytime from memory. Videos like this would be huge especially if they are tailored to say the 20 cocktails you think we have to know at all time! Love what you do and much appreciated, Greg!

[gijsh]

As a chemical engineer I can tell you, you are absolutely right you will lose some of the Orange blossom water through cooking. Even though the main components have quite high boiling points, you evaporate it well below that. So boiling it with the mixture definitely removes some flavour compounds. Additionally, you might have reactions between the flavour molecules themselves or with the water or with the sugar (or a combination) at higher heat. So putting it in at the end is definitely a good way to go

[dylanholt]

Greg, your fruit syrup recipe (room temp, equal parts, etc) is one of, if not the greatest cocktail tips I’ve ever heard. The flavor difference is massive. I use that method every single time. Thank you!

[samanthasousa]

Hey Greg, just because I'm me and a pastry student I feel the need to tell you you are correct in adding orange blossom water at the end. It's a lot like vanilla extract. It won't "cook" off. But the flavor is dulled. So adding at the end is best

[scottsterner]

Greg on twitch: “I haven’t been consuming any sugar at all lately”

Greg on YouTube: “look at all these syrups!!!”

[Q_N-]

Just throwing this out there. The way I cook my ginger syrup. I leave my sugar in a mason jar with thin sliced ginger. The sugar causes the ginger juice to release on its own, after which you bring it to a light boil in a pot, and you can add some water to dilute the concentration to your liking. After that, strain, and bam! Powerful ginger syrup.

[daniel_p_casanova]

Your episode on oleo-saccharum changed my home bar forever. It's one of my all-time favorite ingredients and I still make it exclusively with grapefruit as you did in that video. I created a drink called the Caravedo Coat of Arms using pisco, muddled limes/clementines, amaretto and oleo and it's always a hit whenever I'm able to share it with friends and family. I truly appreciate episodes like this!

[russb]

When you make simple syrup by heating for more than a few minutes, you don't exactly have a sucrose solution anymore, you have invert syrup, where some of the sucrose breaks down into glucose and fructose. This makes it a little sweeter and less likely to recrystalize than if you'd simply stirred the sugar and water together.

[kevincraven]

I've been using 1:1 as my default and referring to 2:1 as "rich" for as long as I've been making cocktails. So I'm really glad you spent some time discussing regular old simple syrup because, even as a longtime fan of the channel, I actually learned something!

[Cosmitzian]

Man, i fully appreciate you mentioning the self-stableness aspect of sugar. I'm a single guy and i definitely don't want to drink enough to not worry about my syrups going bad. I like having options for my cocktails, that's why i really fell for making cocktails during the pandemic, and not having to worry about mostly anything going bad is really comforting for me. At most vermuts in a few months but they never really last that long.

[mollieherlocker]

Even though you've said this episode performed poorly, it's genuinely one of my favorite episodes. I've watched it multiple times even though I've never made any of the syrups. I dunno, maybe it scratches my cooking itch? Regardless, I really love this episode and learned a lot from it!

[RaelNikolaidis]

I live in Texas and grow both peaches and jalapeños in my garden, so…..jalapeño-peach syrup, y’all, it’s so good. My better half ( my husband ) stole it for his barbecue rib recipe. Not that I minded. It turned into more of a culinary ingredient, but I still think it’s great in drinks too. 😊

[pidge]

Would love to see another episode on Soft-Drinks/Soda's since you brought them up!

[Sammie]

Okay, I'm glad you went over the simple part. I've worked a few jobs where I'd help with bar prep and at both venues we made simple using a 1:1 ratio. To be perfectly honest with you I think it's because these were restaurants, not bars, so the bar prep kind of got left out in the cold. Literally. Rarely if ever had access to a stove burner. The 1:1 ratio was convenient because you could make it with hot water from a coffee maker and it'd all dissolve just fine after a minute or two of stirring.
Also, important note for anyone out there who's making simple in a pan or container with measurement lines on the side: *_DON'T USE THOSE LINES!_* The water dissolves/fills in the gaps between the sugar, so if, oh, say, you add sugar up to the 2 cup mark, then add water till it reaches the 4 cup mark, you're actually adding _way_ more water than you think you are, or sugar if you're doing it the other way around. At one of those two jobs we had multiple batches of simple actually go bad and grow mold because a newbie made it that way. There was way more water than sugar and therefore it was a microbe's paradise. I think one time it even grew mold _in the fridge._
If you're doing 2:1 instead of 1:1, you'll still get something usable measuring that way, but it'll still be a lot less concentrated than you intended.

[yutur]

Slightly different take on my orgeat: make the homemade almond milk-type beverage in similar way to what you show. Then I collect and dry out the almond solids, toast them in the oven and grind it up for a toasted almond meal. 1 cup of the almond meal into 2 cups of water, heat to a simmer and let steep and infuse overnight. I strain with a coffee filter. The 'grounds' hold on to about 1/3 cup of water so I top up with about 1/3 cup of the almond milk-type beverage, add 2X the volume of sugar and you get a very nice orgeat. Ditto with macadamia nuts for a nice tiki experience.

[tzamboiv]

I grind my ginger with just a bit of water to get it started in my vitamix, then strain through cheese cloth and squeeze to extract juice. Then make a 2:1 simple syrup with the juice. I love it in penicillins and it’s basically a 2:1 version of the last one you made

[washinthewind]

Greg, this is probably the most useful single episode you have ever done! My line cook brain has some thoughts about technique options but for a home kitchen, this had to be one of the best resources you've made. Well done, sir!

[danielceyler]

for strawberry shortcake when my sister would always make it she'd take washed strawberries cut up and coat them in sugar and then throw them in the fridge for like a day or so then take pound cake and use the strawberries with what syrup they made and some whipped cream to make some deliciousness