A lot of the experimenting or reading I do is based in finding out why we do things a certain way so I can set myself hard and fast rules for new ingredients or methods. Something that has haunted me for the 8 years that I’ve been making 1:1 sugar syrup, is how to measure the equal parts. Way, way back when I was a baby bartender I was taught a pretty basic method, measuring by eye into 700mL bottles. I figured out pretty quickly that something was going wrong. I’d fill the bottle up halfway (to the 350mL mark) with the caster sugar and then add 350mL water. Once the two were totally combined the bottle was no longer full. I was losing volume because of the tiny air spaces between the tiny pebbles of sugar, like how you can still add water to a full bucket of sand. I estimated that on average I was losing 10% of the volume every time. 1g of caster sugar is equal to 1.05ml. That doesn’t seem like much, but when you’re making litres at a time it blows out the numbers. So I was making something like a 9:10 syrup, which really, for many drinks, is probably close enough and not too hard to balance. I want 1:1 to actually mean 1:1 though, so you gotta measure by weight, not by volume, with sugar and water.
I then started working at a place that made a honey water for service, and this kind of stumped me again. Honey is a bitch to measure by volume coz it just sticks to everything, but its super dense particles are so much closer together and there’s no room for trapped air. Honey weighs quite a lot more than it measures in millilitres. 1kg of honey is approximately 735mL. I make a 2:1 honey water by volume because I don’t want to sacrifice too much flavour or the rich consistency, just for the sake of pour-ability.
with whisky 