Beer Syrup Is The Unique Addition To Try For Richer Cocktails

Whipping up simple syrups at home is a snap, and the limitless possibilities for elevating them with various flavors make the ingredient a versatile game-changer for cocktails. You can add fruits, botanicals, spices, herbs — you can even incorporate splashes of spirits into your syrups. And there's a whole category bartenders and mixologists love to tap into that will help you make complex, delicious tipples: Beer syrups.

The magic of beer syrups comes down to a few things. For one, you're starting with a fully formed beverage with its own flavors and aromas — you can translate all of that into whatever cocktail you're making. For another, there are so many different styles of beer to choose from: Make chocolatey syrups with stouts, fruity syrups with sours, and light, crisp, almost champagne-like syrups with lagers. Plus, making beer syrups means you can access the refreshing flavors of some of the best beer cocktails without adding excess carbonation or heaviness.

To make beer syrups, start with the same ratio you would use for simple syrup, a 1:1 proportion of beer to sugar, and heat both together — not reaching a boil — until the sugar is dissolved. From there, you can play with different ratios to dial in on sweetness. Use different sugars to complement the beer style, like brown or demerara to match roasty porters. You can also add nearly anything for more flavors, like herbs with lagers or fruits with sours. 

Stout and porter syrups promise dark chocolate and coffee notes, plus potentially subtle hints of spices and dried fruits. The options are endless when you factor in flavored stouts and porters, too — you could make a syrup with a peanut butter porter or a pumpkin stout, and jazz it up with baking spices or a touch of caramel. These syrups are dreamy for drinks with similar profiles, like the espresso martini, as well as other dessert-ish tipples like the White Russian. But they're also a surprising hit adding richness, depth, and sweetness to brighter, more citrusy drinks — stout syrup works wonders with the acidic pineapple and bitter Campari of the Jungle Bird.

Sours are probably your most versatile style group because of their fruity flavors, which you can further enhance. Got a guava fruited sour? Add mango when you make the syrup. You can then add these syrups to just about any classic tropical cocktail. They're also great with, naturally, any cocktails in the sour category. Try a raspberry or blackberry sour syrup with a gin sour, specifically the Bramble cocktail. Add mint or basil to your syrup to boost the cocktail with herbaceousness. 

IPAs, meanwhile, tend to balance tropical fruit flavors with hop bitterness and malt sweetness, a balance perfect for whiskey cocktails. An IPA syrup would brighten a smooth old fashioned with those fruit flavors. It could also upgrade your margarita with similar notes but more complexity.