What is Demerara syrup?
Demerara syrup is a mix of, you guessed it, Demerara sugar and water. It's an incredible syrup for cocktail making. It provides toffee and caramel notes in your drink from the molasses that you cannot get from simple syrup. It's a brilliant little swap for simple syrup in rum and whisky drinks. The oaky barrel notes of those spirits are complemented by the toffee and caramel from the Demerara, we love it!
Why should I make Demerara syrup?
It's super easy to make and cheap. Yes you can buy it, our recommendation though is to make it yourself, you know exactly what's in it, it lasts for months and months (stored properly!), it's cheaper and has a better texture. Convinced yet?
It will unlock a whole menu of cocktails you can make. It takes minutes, and you can put it in cocktails or over pancakes for the months that follow.
Our recommendation is to make a rich Demerara syrup. We like the texture it adds, it's more syrupy and gives a silky quality to your drinks. The Demerara is an indulgence, and a rich syrup just ups that sweetness and decadence. In a boozy drink like an Old Fashioned it works really well.
Or take a drink everyone knows, an Espresso Martini. Commonly it's sweetened with a sweet coffee liqueur. We love Mr Black's cold brew coffee liqueur for its intense and rich coffee flavour, so if you love coffee, try that one. It's much less sweet than the liqueurs usually used in an Espresso Martini, so combine it with this Demerara syrup and you get something chocolatey, toffee-ish and intense, unlike any Espresso Martini you've had before.
One more thing: in tropical style drinks it holds up really well against all that crushed ice.
The three ratios
Same as simple syrup, the only difference between the three is how much sugar you dissolve into the same amount of water. Weigh both, don't measure by volume, Demerara is coarser than white sugar and settles differently depending on how you scoop it.
| Syrup | Demerara sugar | Water | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 500g | 500g | 1:1 |
| Semi-rich | 750g | 500g | 1.5:1 |
| Rich | 1000g | 500g | 2:1 |
For this one we'd go rich, for the reasons above. Scale up or down as you like, the ratio is the thing that matters.
Ingredients
- Demerara sugar, weighed to whichever ratio you're making from the table above
- Water
How to make it
- Prep time
- 1 minute
- Cooking time
- 5-6 minutes
- Total time
- 6-7 minutes
- 1Weigh out your Demerara sugar and water to whichever ratio you're making.
- 2Preheat a saucepan on a low heat.
- 3Add them to the saucepan and stir to combine.
- 4Keep it on a low heat and stir constantly. Don't let it boil or simmer or you'll begin to make caramel.
- 5As soon as the sugar is dissolved, take it off the heat. Keep going and it'll get thinner and too sweet, and we're after a thick texture here.
- 6Once the grains are gone, you're done.
Storing your Demerara syrup
Store in the fridge in an airtight bottle that has been sterilised beforehand. Stored this way it will last about a month. The richer the syrup, the longer it keeps, since the sugar is doing the preserving.
Our tip, freeze it! It will last for months and months. Then decant a little syrup into a bottle in the fridge as you need it. Perfect, an indefinite supply of homemade Demerara syrup.
