Make Your Own · The Components
The Ingredients
The components every recipe assumes you have on hand — syrups, shrubs, infusions, essences. Each with its own method, yield, and the drinks that depend on it.
The components every recipe assumes you have on hand — syrups, shrubs, infusions, essences. Each with its own method, yield, and the drinks that depend on it.
Most cocktail recipes spend a sentence on "honey syrup" or "rich demerara" and assume you'll work out the rest. This is the rest. Small components, made at home, kept in the fridge — and the recipes they unlock.
Sugar and water in equal parts. The most basic sweetener in the bar — and the difference between a clean drink and one that grits at the bottom.
Demerara sugar dissolved 2 : 1 with water. A deeper, molasses-leaning syrup for old-fashioneds, tiki, and anywhere you want body.
Honey thinned 3 parts to 1 with warm water. The only way honey behaves in a cold shaker — and the move that makes a real Bee's Knees possible.
Honey, warm water, and fresh ginger steeped together. The defining ingredient of Sam Ross's Penicillin — and the bar's best winter syrup.
Pure cane sugar dissolved rich, 2 : 1, the way the French West Indies sweetens its rum. Heavier and more molasses-leaning than simple — and the soul of a Ti Punch.
Cinnamon sticks simmered into simple syrup. The warm-spice shortcut behind Elusive Dreams and a run of modern tiki riffs.
Fresh passion fruit pulp cooked down with sugar. A modern tiki staple — and a different thing from the unsweetened purée some recipes call for instead.
Fresh ginger simmered into plain simple syrup. Sharper than its honey-sweetened cousin — for drinks that want ginger's heat without a floral backbone.
Pineapple juice and trim reduced with sugar. Concentrated pineapple flavor without the extra water a straight juice pour adds.
A real vanilla bean steeped into simple syrup. The quiet half of Don the Beachcomber's secret house allspice-and-vanilla blend.
Brandied or maraschino cherries simmered down with their own liquid. Cherry as a real mixed-in flavor, not just a garnish.
Peel oils, citric acid, water — and one lemon's juice stretches like four. Dave Arnold's chemistry, popularized by Nickle Morris.
Lime's acid profile is more complex than lemon's. A 2 : 1 citric : malic blend rebuilds its pH; the peel carries the aroma.
Lime juice, peel, and sugar cooked into a syrup that keeps. The argument with fresh juice that makes a Gimlet a Gimlet.
Pomegranate juice, sugar, and orange flower water. Nothing like the red corn syrup at the supermarket — and the reason classic recipes that call for it work.
Almonds steeped into a milk, then sweetened with sugar and lifted with orange flower water. The defining ingredient of a tiki canon's worth of drinks.
Lime zest, ginger, clove, and almond infused into rum and sweetened into a cordial. The spiced backbone under a Zombie or a Nuclear Daiquiri.
Allspice berries steeped in overproof rum and sweetened into a warm, clove-and-nutmeg cordial. The spice note under a Rum Barrel or a Doctor Funk.
Strawberries, sugar, and apple cider vinegar steeped overnight. The brightest summer cocktail modifier you can make for ten dollars.
Darker and more tannic than strawberry. Built for bourbon highballs and the cool nights that come with the late season.
Fresh cider reduced and sharpened with cider vinegar. The autumn shrub — built for bourbon, rye, and apple brandy.
Orange essential oil dissolved into Everclear with a propylene glycol carrier, decanted into a 30 mL atomizer. Fresh peel oil, all year, in two sprays.
Food-grade lemon essential oil in the same atomizer base. The workhorse of the kit — for every drink that finishes with a lemon-peel twist.
Pink grapefruit essential oil, atomized. More aromatic per drop than orange or lemon — one spray often does the job of two.