Demerara Syrup Recipes

Sometimes you need a refreshing pick-me-up without the booze. This simple cooler gives you maximum complexity with minimal sugar and can easily be customized to complement your great taste.

Try it with muddled blackberries and cucumber. Or a splash of your favorite spirit. Why not?! 

Your choice of bitters will have a big impact on the final flavor of this drink. Experiment with different types: Aromatic, orange, chocolate ...

Have fun with it!

INGREDIENTS

.5 oz. Eli Mason Demerara Syrup

.5 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

2-3 Dashes of Bitters (your choice)

Club Soda

Pour the first three ingredients over ice in a Collins glass and top with soda. Give it a quick stir. It’s that easy. 

The name "daiquiri" has been wrongfully appropriated by sugary-sweet, brightly-colored beach drinks. While those are fun for novelty's sake, they're nothing close to the original.

A simple combination of rum, lime juice, and sugar ... the addition of our Demerara Syrupadds depth and richness to the flavor while complimenting the sugarcane flavors of a good rum.

Variation of the Century: Try it with Plantation Stiggins' Fancy Pineapple Rum, a rich and delicious infused spirit of recent origin. It's not always easy to find, but this is the perfect 3-ingredient drink for outdoor summer entertaining. 

INGREDIENTS:

2 oz. Rum - [Experiment to find your favorite for this recipe.]

1 oz. Fresh-Squeezed Lime Juice

.5 oz. Eli Mason Demerara Syrup

Lime for Garnish

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously to chill and strain into a chilled glass. Garnish with a strip of lime zest. 

Sangrias and punches are more popular than ever and regardless if you're looking to make a large batch for a party or just a sangria for one, Eli Mason's Demerara Syrup stands ready to help. 

Adding more than just sweetness to a cocktail, Demerara adds subtle sugarcane flavors that come directly from the raw demerara sugar. Demerara is a light brown, lightly refined sugar produced from the first crystallization of raw cane juice. Unlike brown sugar, which is refined white sugar with molasses added back, Demerara retains its molasses from the beginning and lends warm, caramel-like notes to any drink (including coffee). It pairs perfectly with sugarcane-based spirits like rum and Brazilian cachaça, but also works exceptionally well in punches and red wine sangrias. 

INGREDIENTS:

2 oz. Red Wine (Such as Red Zinfandel, Tempranillo or Bonarda)

1 oz. Dark Rum

.5 oz. Orange Liqueur

1 oz. Eli Mason Demerara Syrup

.5 oz. Fresh-Squeezed Lime Juice

1 oz. Fresh-Squeezed Orange Juice

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake to chill and transfer to glass to serve. Garnish with a strip of orange zest or slice of fresh fruit.

It's dark and bitter cocktail with just a touch of complex sweetness, named after the eponymous poet of similar description and unrivaled notoriety. Charles Bukowski championed what he might call the working stiff — bartenders, mail carriers, plumbers — and worked to bring the poetry of their lives to the wider world.

The drink itself is garnished with dark maraschino cherries. Our Demerara Syrup provides a gentle sweetness and rounds out this spirit-forward sipper.

We have no patience for neon-red maraschinos. Only a high-quality cherry like Luxardo Maraschino will do.

INGREDIENTS

2.0 oz. Bourbon

1.0 oz. Amaro Averna

0.5 oz. Eli Mason Demerara Syrup

0.5 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

1 Barspoon Cherry Syrup (from your jar of primo cherries)

Stir ingredients over ice and strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice. Garnish with premium cherries and a lemon twist.

This warming cocktail is a Southerner's take on Irish coffee, richer and more grain-forward in flavor, with a bonus of being made with local whiskey. If you'd like to scale up this recipe to serve more than one person, double the volume of heavy cream and shake it in a quart jar. Increase the cocktail ingredients by the number of cocktails you'd like to make.

2 oz Your Favorite Whiskey

1 oz Eli Mason Demerara Syrup

4 oz Brewed dark-roast coffee

2-3 oz Heavy cream  

Garnish: Mason jar shaken Whipping Cream to make it easy to pour.

Eli Mason - Charleston Breakfast Coffee from Eli Mason on Vimeo.

Tiki drinks are not only refreshing and fun. They're also easily customized to your taste. Not sweet enough? Add more juice! Dark rum too funky for this recipe? Switch to spiced rum.

This variation on The Jungle Bird bumps up the amount of pineapple juice and replaces the strongly bitter Campari with its lighter flavored cousin Aperol, making for a less bitter finish and (we think) a better balanced sipper. You might even say it's a more friendly drink.

As always, squeeze your own fresh lime juice, though feel free to use a pre-squeezed pineapple juice as long as it's not from concentrate. 

This recipe can easily be multiplied to make a large batch for a party. Tiki punch!

INGREDIENTS

1 oz. Dark Rum

1 oz. Aperol

.5 oz. Eli Mason Demerara Syrup

.5 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

3 oz. Pineapple Juice

Combine all ingredients and shake vigorously with ice. Strain into a fun glass over ice and garnish audaciously. Serve with a bendy straw for the full bird-neck effect.

VARIATIONS

Add 1 oz. mezcal for a smoky Mayan Jungle Bird.

For a classic version of The Jungle Bird, replace the Aperol with .5 oz. Campari and drop the pineapple juice to 2 oz. 

A good Tiki drink is nothing to scoff at. Composed of layers of flavors that all work together in harmony, you'll need several elements to take any regular cocktail into tropical Tiki status.

It typically starts with a base of good rum. You may even use several varieties of rum, further adding complexity to the flavor. 

Next, you'll need fresh fruit juices. Be it citrus, berry, pineapple or passionfruit, a blend of several juices will add even more depth.

Finally, you'll want a 'seasoning' or spice. This can often come from the uses flavored syrups like our Demerara Syrup, which lends a rich great sugarcane flavor to a drink. Sometimes you'll even see the addition of nutmeg, cinnamon, or other spices as well. 

Once combined and shaken with ice, you'll have a complex yet refreshing Tiki Drink!

INGREDIENTS:

1 oz. Light Rum

1 oz. Spiced Rum

1 oz. Dark Rum

1 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

1 oz. Fresh Pineapple Juice

1 oz. Strawberry Nectar

.5 oz. Eli Mason Demerara Syrup

Pinch of Nutmeg

Fresh Fruit for Garnish

Combine all ingredients except garnish in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake vigorously to chill and strain into a glass with fresh ice. Garnish and serve.