A central index for all syrup experiments. 
Post recipes and findings on simple syrups, demerara, spiced, ginger, honey and beyond.
Related: Orgeat – Almond Syrup Masterclass
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I wanted to share a bit about recent experiments with syrups that I have done. I read Darcy O’Neil’s blog over at artofdrink.com after being disappointed with my cinnamon syrup that was made by boiling cinnamon sticks in water and making that into a syrup.
What you want to do is get the essential oils from the cinnamon bark into solution. Water apparently does quite a poor job of extracting those oils. So he suggests to dissolve cinnamon essential oils in alcohol and use that tincture to make cinnamon syrup.
This can be done in two ways, either leave cinnamon sticks to soak in high-proof neutral alcohol, or buy cinnamon essential oils. I did the latter as a first experiment. The recipe I used can be found here: https://www.artofdrink.com/blog/cinnamon-syrup. All you need is water, sugar, foodsafe cinnamon essential oil, and neutral high proof alcohol (everclear, still strength vodka, etc.)
I did an pseudo A-B test with the Zombie and Rum Firewalker, but not on the same day. The difference is incredibly noticable. The cinnamon is now pronounced, but not overpowering. I absolutely recommend giving this a try. Here are the recipe’s i used for those drinks.
Zombie:
- 45ml Smith & Cross (or other navy strength funky jamaican)
- 45ml Bacardi 8 (or other aged column still spanish style rum)
- 45ml Plantation O.F.T.D. (or other 151 demerara)
- 15ml falernum
- 22,5ml lime juice
- 15ml grapefruit juice
- 15ml cinnamon syrup (Art of Drink style)
- 5ml grenadine
- 1 dash absinthe or pernod
- 1 dash angosturra bitters
- Shake with crushed ice and a few normal ice cubes, dirty dump into tall glass. Garnish with mint and grapefruit slice.
Rum Firewalker
- 90ml Rum Fire (or other unaged jamaican overproof)
- 30ml Campari
- 30ml Lime juice
- 30ml Cinnamon syrup.
- Shake with crushed ice and a few normal icecubes. Dirty dump into tall glass. Garnish with mint and cinnamon stick.
These drinks turned out incredibly good. It also got me quite tipsy, so it might not be super objective haha. But it does make me wonder about other tinctures (alcohol and essential oil solution). This cinnamon tincture will probably last me the coming 5 to 10 years, because it is super shelf stable.
I will keep you posted if I make any other syrups from tinctures. For now, thanks for reading and I encourage everyone to give this a try! And then let me know!
Matthijs
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