# Making your own flavored syrups



## Consul (Sep 2, 2006)

Hi, everyone! It's been a long time since I've hung around here. I've been back in college, so time has been limited.

I also didn't quite know where to put this thread. This seems as logical of a place as any.

Anyway, I decided to do a little experiment to see if I could make my own flavored syrups, for making my own cold coffee drinks, cream sodas, and the like. I started with lemon, since I had some of those I needed to use up.

I took two lemons, zested them with a veggie peeler, and put the resulting zest into a pot with 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup water, and the juice of said lemons. Like making a simple syrup, I brought it to a boil, then let it simmer for about 10 minutes before straining it into a vessel to cool.

The resulting syrup is a nice, sweet, and very lemony punch in the face, which is what I was after. I still think there are some adjustments to be made, but overall, a similar process should yield nice, flavorful syrups for limes and oranges as well (you'll likely want to adjust the amount of sugar down for oranges).

I did this experiment fairly late here, tonight, and ended up waking my sister due to the lemon aroma permeating the house. I call that a success.

Next, I moved on to oranges. These were the steps I took:

Peeled the zest off of an orange, and put it in a small sauce pot.
Juiced said orange, and measured amount (I got a half a cup from it).
Put juice and equal amount of sugar (in my case, a half-cup) into aforementioned saucepot.
Placed on high heat to bring to a boil, then backed down to medium low to simmer for about five minutes.
Strained through small strainer into bowl to cool.
Poured into jar for fridge storage
I think I used too much sugar, as some of the orange flavor got kinda "diluted", if that makes sense. Still, as a first attempt, it came out pretty good. For my next attempt, I'll use less sugar, and simmer a bit longer to evaporate more water out.

Anyway, that's just one of the many experiments I've done over the past six months. I'm still trying to figure out how I might make a strawberry syrup suitable for drink flavoring, so if anyone has any ideas, I'm willing to listen.


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## Greenwand (Mar 20, 2010)

I would imagine dehydrating strawberries in large amounts, would work well for later boiling with sugar water. My plans are to try dehydrating various fruits and veggies to see what works best.

Thankyou for sharing your experience


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## Ekim (Mar 28, 2010)

If anyone can figure out a way to make watermelon syrup, let me know.

I agree on making your own syrups though. Store-bought sour mix is awful. Freshly-made whiskey and amaretto sours are amazing in comparison.


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