Post #348897 by DJ HawaiianShirt on Tue, Dec 11, 2007 10:52 AM

I'm sorry, but are you saying that rock candy syrup is of "higher quality" than simple syrup?

I sure hope not.

The quality of any sugar syrup is limited to the quality of the sugar and water involved, regardless of concentration.

Also, I'm not sure I see the big deal with RCS. Is anyone using it instead of simple syrup? Because they shouldn't be.

RCS is so much sweeter than SS that any substitution of one for the other completely and utterly changes a cocktail, and rarely for the better. Balance is lost.

Unless you're making a RCS that is, say, exactly twice (or thrice) as strong as normal SS (so that you can calculate how much less to use in a recipe), then I'm not sure it should be used at all.

Also, as we've noted, the degree to which you can supersaturate your syrup is a function of many factors. So in the end, different RCSs will be of different intensities. This creates a variation between the end result of cocktail recipes that is less-than-ideal and is not consistent.

I'm sorry if I'm commenting on things that you didn't say or mean. I'm just trying to say that I see RCS as nothing more than a simple(if inconsistent) ingredient to be called for in a recipe, or as a visual and scientific novelty, and I caution anyone trying to use it as a replacement(or "enhancement") for anything else.