Upgrade Summer Cocktails With A Customizable Floral Syrup

Mango margaritas, minty mojitos, and whiskey sours are classic cocktails with refreshing summer ingredients to serve at your next summer happy hour. There's nothing wrong with the classics, but there's an ever-advancing, ever-evolving world of mixology to keep up with, and a tea-infused simple syrup is the easy yet impressive ingredient your summer cocktails need.

Tea bags are cheap staples with a wide range of flavors, caffeine content, and tannin levels. Whether they're fruity, floral, spiced, or tea leaf blends, tea bags are convenient flavoring packets. Making tea syrup is as simple as making a cup of tea. You just steep a tea bag in hot water for a few minutes until its fragrance has fully bloomed, stirring sugar or honey into the hot tea. The sugar should dissolve quickly, but you can always heat the tea over a low flame until the sugar dissolves and the syrup is slightly thick and glossy.

You can use single-ingredient green or black tea for a syrup with an earthy, slightly bitter finish. Baking spices and aromatic ginger teas will add a spicy complement to pair with sours or carbonated cocktails. Lemon, raspberry, and peach are all popular summer sweet tea flavors that you can convert into simple syrups.

You can use tea simple syrup as a substitute for sweeteners in any cocktail. The infused syrup will lend a subtle yet distinctive flavor that'll provide a sophisticated upgrade to classic and modern cocktails.

Spirits have unique flavor palates that you can enhance or complement with certain types of tea. For example, gin's floral profile will pair well with both floral teas like lavender and citrus teas like lemon black tea. You could use lemon tea syrup and sparkling water to make a gin fizz. A lavender simple syrup would make a fragrant upgrade for a lemon drop martini.

Bitter green and black tea syrups will enhance cocktails with bitters like Old Fashioned. Spiced teas like chai would taste delicious in a creamy cocktail like a White Russian. Since bourbon and whiskey often have rich notes of vanilla, caramel, and baking spices, they'd work well with spice-heavy tea syrups as well. An herbal mint or spearmint tea syrup will supply a cooling sweetness to quench your summer thirst. Use it along with fresh mint to muddle into a mojito or mint julep. Hibiscus tea syrup would bring a tangy enhancement to a limey margarita.