Post #361106 by The Gnomon on Thu, Feb 14, 2008 8:21 AM

On 2008-02-13 18:34, kleptic wrote:
my wife kind of thinks I'm crazy making all these syrups myself now but man the difference seems so huge and its not that much work.

seems strange that we don't have a "rock candy standard" somebody should come up with a cup to pound ratio for perfect rock candy syrup for drinks.

The RCS is the easiest thing in the world to make. The orgeat OTOH is pretty involved. If you do it right, making your own almond milk rather than store bought, use nylon straining bags rather than cheese cloth if you can. Scottes located them a while back and when I got mine I could see why he was raving about them.

As for the "rock candy standard", you're preaching to Scottes' choir.

When I do the jar method, after stirring in the maximum amount of sugar that the heat of boiling water will allow, the syrup is moderately unstable, and is a kind of standard in itself. It's regulated by the fact that it can only be heated to essentially the temperature of boiling water (it's actually slightly higher because a small amount of additional heat is transferred into the syrup from the burner, to the pot, to the glass).