Fresh Never Frozen…except sometimes
We fresh squeeze our juice, and hand-cut fresh citrus for garnish as a part of our bar program but when it comes to our syrups fresh doesn’t always beat frozen and it comes down to one number…
The 66° Problem
Pull a bag of Aloha Cocktails syrup out of the freezer and you're probably expecting a solid block of ice, something you'd have to run under hot water for ten minutes before you could even get the cap off. I know we did when we first got started but that’s not quite what hapens. Instead you get a syrup that's deeply cold, and a little thicker than usual, but still very much pourable. The reason comes down to one number: 66. That's roughly the Brix reading on most of our syrups, and it's the whole explanation for why a freezer that would lock a glass of water solid doesn't do the same thing here.
WTF Is Brix?
Brix (written as °Bx) is just a measurement of how much sugar is dissolved in a liquid, expressed as a percentage. The name comes from Adolf Ferdinand Wenceslaus Brix, a 19th century German mathematician and engineer who took the original method of measuring the ratio of sugar in water and greatly improved it for accuracy. The contribution means that it’s referred to worldwide as Brix and not Balling. Back in the 19th century the government and brewers/distillers needed a way to accurately measure exactly what a yield would be plus a way to make sure that it wasn’t being watered down on the back end. Today, in our kitchen it’s used to ensure that our syrup is consistent, and built in a way that fights against spoilage. We check it with a refractometer, a small handheld tool you look through like a tiny telescope. A few drops of syrup on the lens and it gives you a reading in seconds. A basic 1:1 simple syrup usually sits around 50 Brix. Ours run richer than that, closer to 66, and that difference in sugar concentration is what changes everything once the temperature starts dropping.
Ice Ice Baby…
Water on its own freezes at 32°F, but dissolved sugar gets in the way of that process. The more there is of it the harder it is for water molecules to line up into the neat crystal structure that turns liquid into ice, so the more sugar you've got dissolved in there, the colder it has to get before freezing actually happens. It's the same reason road crews salt icy streets in the winter. Different substance, same basic trick, dissolved solids mess with the freezing point.
A home freezer usually runs around 0°F. A standard 1:1 simple syrup (1 part sugar to 1 part water) will freeze solid well before it gets that cold. A rich, 2:1 syrup sitting around 66 Brix is a completely different story. Ice doesn't even start forming until it drops to around 13°F, and once it does, the syrup that's still liquid just gets more concentrated, which pushes its freezing point down even further. That's why it never actually locks into a solid block, even in a deep freezer. Instead it just gets cold, a little thick, maybe a touch slushy, and stays exactly as usable as it was the day you made it.
Whether you're making a cocktail tomorrow night or you don't plan on using it again for a month, it doesn't matter. You’re going to be good to go. Throw our syrup (sealed) into the frezer until you need it.
One quick note before you use it: give the bag a good hard shake once you pull it out of the freezer, before you pour it into your syrup bottle. Cold syrup can settle a bit, and a solid shake gets it back to exactly where it should be. Then let it rip.
