Cocktails with Caramel syrup
Caramel syrup is a sweet syrup whose flavour and colour come from caramelized sugar dissolved to a pourable liquid.
Taste profile
Deep toasted-sugar aroma over a high, rounded sweetness, with a faint edge of bitterness from the browning.
How it's used
Poured in small measures as a sweetening and colouring accent, it dissolves readily into a build because it is thin and pourable, and is dosed to add caramelized-sugar depth without weighing the drink down.
Substitutes for Caramel syrup
Any other caramelized-sugar product works, since a substitute must supply both the sweetness and the toasted-sugar aroma; a plain sugar syrup fails because it lacks the browned-sugar character that defines the class.
Often confused with
Caramel sauce
Caramel syrup is a thin, pourable sugar-and-water syrup that dissolves readily into liquids; caramel sauce is thicker and typically enriched with dairy such as butter or cream, giving it a heavier, coating body that does not blend cleanly into a drink.
Description
Makers heat sugar until it browns, then dissolve it into water to a thin, pourable consistency. The caramelization — the browning of heated sugar into new coloured, aromatic compounds — supplies both its colour and its character, placing it in the syrup family rather than among plant-derived products.
