Man can’t live on black coffee alone. Are you one of those people who prefer sweet coffee? Here’s a simple recipe to help you out with how to make simple syrup for coffee.
Simple syrup for coffee is made by liquefying sugar in water. It can be made through a hot or cold process.
How to Make Simple Syrup for Coffee
Cocktails, iced coffee, lemonade, and iced tea can all be given an upgrade with a dollop of homemade simple syrup. You can even add flavor to it as well, and you could keep it in the fridge for up to a month.
What exactly is simple syrup?
Simple syrup is a sweetener that is made by dissolving sugar in water. That's pretty much it.
Imagine drinking iced coffee and thinking to yourself “I want it sweeter.” You can’t just pour a teaspoon of sugar into your cold drink.
We’ve all been there.
No matter how you stir it, you’ll notice how the sweetness can’t penetrate through the coffee. You end up with granules of sugar at the bottom of the glass and coffee that’s still too bitter than you like.
This is where simple syrup comes in, a liquid sugar for iced coffee.
The diffusion process of sugar crystals is slowed by the low temperature. Because the solvent has low kinetic energy, it cannot move quickly enough to surround the sugar crystals.
Simple syrup evenly distributes sweetness throughout beverages of any temperature. This makes it an important component of many iced drinks like iced coffee and cocktails. 🍸
What do you need
It’s easy to make your own simple syrup at home. All you need is the following ingredients and utensils:
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup Water
- Pitcher
- Saucepan
- Spatula (for mixing)
Take a look at this helpful video below 👇
Step 1. Pour Water
In a pitcher, pour in your water.
Remember how much water you’ve put in. If it’s your first time, you can start with 1 cup.
Before adding the sugar, you can heat the water first. Heating the sugar and water together won’t ruin your simple syrup; it will simply take longer to heat.
The water does not need to be brought to a boil though at all. Just warm enough to dissolve your sugar.
But if you want the hot process, you can boil the water before pouring in the sugar. It’s also a way to make sure the water is clean and could extend the shelf life of your simple syrup.
Step 2. Pour Sugar
Carefully pour your sugar into your pitcher containing water.
Don’t just dump everything in, we’re not in the stone age. 😂 You also need to watch out for clumps.
The standard sweetener is white granulated sugar. But once you've mastered that basic base, feel free to experiment with other sugars like brown sugar.
Brown sugar will give an almost caramelly flavor. You can even put in some honey, but pay extra towards it as using honey in drinks can be a bit tricky.
Just make sure to keep the ratio 1:1.
Step 3. Stir
Keep stirring your mixture until the sugar is fully dissolved.
You want your sugar to be fully dissolved for a perfect simple syrup. With the cold process, where your syrup doesn’t go over a stove, you might have to stir for a good 10 minutes.
With the hot process, you might have to dissolve your sugar at medium heat. Be careful though, you don’t want all the water to evaporate and end up with a syrup that’s too sweet.
We only want to dissolve the sugar, and not make caramel syrup.
When you’ve properly made it, your simple syrup should be clear in appearance.
From here, you can store your syrup in used wine bottles. I’d like to pop in a speed pourer to make it easier for me to add to my coffee.
Here’s what it looks like 👇
The consistent pour speed, accuracy and control my speed pourer provides is what made it an essential kitchen tool for me.
How to make flavored simple syrup for coffee
From our simple syrup, you can already create other different flavors by simply adding flavored extracts. In fact, you can add a few drops of vanilla to your mixture if you like.
It’s definitely much simpler than lavender syrup, and much much simpler than white chocolate.
The process of making syrup for coffee varies with different recipes.
For this simple syrup, you wouldn’t even need to fire up the stove. As I mentioned earlier, with other simple syrup recipes, the sugar has to be mixed with water and dissolved over medium heat.
Some recipes are very easy to mess up, while the simple syrup is so simple that your kindergartener can do it over the weekend.
How to use syrups in coffee
Now that you have your own simple syrup, let's make some delicious coffee with it.
2 tablespoons of coffee syrup for your regular cup of coffee is a good place to start.
The final answer about how much syrup to put in your coffee depends a lot on how sweet you want it to be.
One of the best ways to use simple syrup is in a latte. Flavored lattes are simply caffé lattes that have flavoring syrup or powder added to them.
Caffé latte is espresso with milk.
The steamed milk and espresso drink serves as an excellent foundation for additional flavor.
The milk in your coffee serves as a blank canvas. In that case, let’s paint it with flavors your taste buds can enjoy!
Flavored lattes are delicious hot or cold. Just make sure to pour in your syrup after the coffee, and before the milk.
Here are a few other things you might like to know about simple syrup: 👇
How long will my syrup last in the fridge?
Ideally, you should only make enough simple syrup. It’s not like you’re opening up a cafe at home. But what if you made too much syrup?
When stored properly, your hot-processed simple syrup can stay in the fridge for up to a month.
Rich syrup on the other hand can stay in the fridge for up to six months. Rich syrup is just as simple to make as simple syrup. The only difference is it uses 2 parts sugar for every 1 part water.
Cold-processed syrups can grow mold in roughly half the time. This is probably because it doesn’t go through heat, and heat kills most bacteria in water.
What makes simple syrup different from other syrups?
Most flavoring syrups begin as water mixed with a hodgepodge of ingredients. It can even be made with imitation sugar and artificial flavor. Simple syrup is made by combining sugar with water to make it liquid.
Simple syrup is the queen of DIY coffee syrups
Water + sugar, how hard can it be? If you want a quick way to make your coffee a hella lot special, this simple syrup recipe for coffee is perrr-fect!
And if you’re thinking of just buying one online, it’s going to be a waste of money. I mean, c’mon. Sugar and water and some elbow grease for stirring?! You’re going to end up just paying for shipping.
If you plan to buy syrup online, might as well buy flavored ones like pumpkin spice. But if you want to make your own syrup at home, check out our other syrup recipes such as the sweet and tangy blueberry syrup.
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