Do you make flavored syrups at home? It’s really easy to do, saves money, and if you can boil water, you can make a syrup.
However, there are a few things to watch out for, especially when making thicker “rich” syrups or working with dry ingredients instead of fruits. If you’ve ever ended up with syrup that’s gritty or so thick after cooling that it’s practically solid, you’re the victim of crystallization. This results from oversaturation of sugar…so what’s going on and how do you fix it?
TL;DR version
As a rule of thumb taken from the world of candy-making, the temperature the sugar is cooked to will indicate the texture it’ll end up when cooled. Use heat to melt your sugar if needed, but take it off the heat as soon as the granules are dissolved for best results.
Longer version
Take this example of a recipe for a rich cinnamon syrup – “rich” indicating the thicker texture from a 2:1 sugar ratio instead of the “simple” 1:1.
- Combine a cinnamon stick with 1 part water and bring to a boil to draw out the flavors
- Add 2 parts of sugar, heat until dissolved
- Take off heat and let it sit for 12-24 hours to let the cinnamon continue to infuse
Here’s the key lesson: as you heat up water+sugar in step 2, the water will start evaporating, leaving a higher concentration of sugar. If you let this go for too long, you’ll end up with too little remaining water to handle the volume of sugar in the mixture. Warmer temperatures allow sugar to stay in its dissolved state, but as it cools it will solidify because the sugar is now oversaturated for the amount of water it’s in.
At this point of oversaturation, any stray granules or solids will kickstart crystallization as other non-dissolved molecules latch onto the solid. This leaves you with grainy, white, solid chunks instead of smooth sweet glaze.
Hope that was helpful to troubleshoot next time something goes wrong! Let me know if you have any other syrup making tips and tricks!