Muddling or Macerating: For Ripe Fruit with High Water Content
It can be a bit tricky to work with fruit and syrups because the fruit bring such a high water content, and an unknown amount of sugar. But the final product is worth the extra effort!
Muddling or Blending Fruit with Simple Syrup
For Fruits with a high water content like berries, melon, stone fruit, etc, consider simply muddling the fruit into your syrup.Chop the fruit into 1″ or smaller pieces and muddle in the bottom of a bowl or cocktail shaker. Combine with syrup and stir. Add fruit and continue to muddle to taste. Fine-strain out the fruit when you’re happy with the flavor.
If you’re lazy like me, I’ll sometimes take this approach: Add a small portion of your syrup and your flavoring ingredient to a blender and blend. Then fine-strain the bits from your blended mixture to create an ultra-concentrated syrup. Add it back to the rest of your unflavored syrup until you’re happy with the flavor.
Macerated Fruit Syrup
Another method for fruit: While this isn’t technically a “simple” syrup, if you’re looking to make a sugar syrup with a fruit that has a high water content, I’d actually recommend maceration instead. Simply chop the fruit into small pieces in a bowl and add sugar. Stir to coat, cover, and let it sit for a couple of hours. The sugar will help draw the liquid out of the fruit and when you return, you’ll find a bowl of fruit chunks swimming in delicious fruity syrup.
Calibrating your Sweetness
Note that for both of these methods, you will want to taste check the sweetness of your syrup as it will likely be watered down by the water in the fruit, but may also become sweeter if the fruit is sweeter as well. Try to add sugar or water as needed to retain the same level of sweetness as your original (unflavored) syrup. (You may need to make a small amount of unflavored syrup for comparison. Don’t worry, it’ll go to good use!
