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Mint simple syrup is sugar, water and fresh mint leaves, and it takes about ten minutes. Heat equal parts sugar and water until the sugar melts, take the pan off the heat, drop in the leaves, wait fifteen minutes, strain. That is the whole recipe.
The reason so many homemade batches taste bitter and look like pond water is that people boil the mint. Mint does not want to be boiled. Treat it like tea and it stays bright, green and sweet.
Table of Contents
What You Need
- One cup white sugar. Plain granulated. Brown sugar makes it muddy and icing sugar will not behave.
- One cup water. Straight from the tap is fine.
- A generous handful of fresh mint leaves, about three quarters of a cup, loosely packed. Spearmint for drinks. Peppermint is much stronger and better suited to chocolate puddings.
- A small saucepan, a fine sieve and a clean jar with a lid.
Leaves only. Pull them off the stems and leave the stems in the compost, because that is where a lot of the bitterness lives.
How to Make It
- Put the sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the sugar has completely dissolved and small bubbles start at the edge of the pan.
- Take the pan off the heat. This is the step that matters.
- Add the mint leaves and press them under the surface with a spoon so they are all submerged.
- Leave it to steep for fifteen minutes. Thirty gives you a stronger flavour. Do not go past an hour.
- Pour it through a fine sieve into a clean jar and throw the leaves away. Do not squeeze them.
- Let it cool with the lid off, then seal it and put it in the fridge.
You will get roughly a cup and a half of syrup, which is enough for about a dozen drinks.
The Three Mistakes That Make It Bitter
- Boiling the mint. Heat breaks the leaves down and pulls out the harsh compounds along with the fresh ones. Off the heat, always.
- Leaving the stems in. They are woody and they taste it. The Wimpy Vegetarian makes the same point in its step by step guide: stems in the pan give you a bitter syrup.
- Steeping it overnight. More time does not mean more mint after a point. Past an hour you start collecting the flavours you were trying to avoid.
The fourth quiet mistake is squeezing the leaves in the sieve to get the last drops out. You get about a teaspoon of syrup and a lot of green bitterness. Let them drain.
Simple Syrup or Rich Syrup?
Standard simple syrup is one part sugar to one part water. Rich syrup is two parts sugar to one part water, and bartenders reach for it because it makes a drink feel rounder in the mouth without watering it down.
| Simple (1 to 1) | Rich (2 to 1) | |
|---|---|---|
| Texture | Thin, pours like water | Thick, coats the spoon |
| Sweetness per spoon | Lower | Roughly double |
| Best in | Long drinks, spritzes, iced tea | Juleps, sours, anything stirred |
| Keeps | Shorter | Longer, because sugar preserves |
If you are making it for sparkling wine drinks, use the one to one. Rich syrup can make a spritz feel heavy.
What to Do With It
- Mint and Prosecco spritz. Twenty millilitres of syrup, a squeeze of lime, one hundred millilitres of chilled sparkling wine, top with soda, one mint sprig.
- Shortcut mojito. It replaces the muddled mint and the sugar in one move.
- Iced tea or lemonade. A tablespoon at a time until it tastes right.
- Over fruit. Strawberries, watermelon and peaches all wake up with a drizzle.
- In coffee or hot chocolate. A teaspoon turns a flat white into something worth sitting down for.
- Brushed on cake layers before the icing goes on, to keep a sponge moist.
For more drinks that use a syrup like this, our Negroni recipe and the Americano are both worth a look, and the French Kiss shows what a sweet element does in a sparkling drink.
The Wine to Pour It Into
Brown Brothers Prosecco
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- King Valley fruit, which is where Australian Prosecco started
- Soft, fruity and off-dry, so it meets a mint syrup halfway
- Around twenty two dollars, which makes it a jug wine in the best sense
- Too fruity if you want a bone-dry aperitif
- Not a bottle for sipping slowly on its own
Prosecco is the right base here because it is light, has a touch of sweetness of its own, and does not have the toasty character that a bottle-fermented sparkling brings. Mint plus toast is a strange room to be in. If you want to understand what the label is telling you, our guide to the difference between Prosecco and Cava covers it, and the residual sugar explainer tells you how sweet the wine already is before you add anything.
How Strong Is a Mint Spritz?
One Australian standard drink is ten grams of pure alcohol. A hundred millilitre pour of an eleven per cent sparkling wine works out at just under nine grams, so about nine tenths of a standard drink. Top it with soda rather than more wine and a spritz stays close to a single drink, which is why it is a good long afternoon option.
The syrup itself adds sugar, not alcohol. A teaspoon of one to one syrup is somewhere around twenty calories, so two teaspoons in a drink is a small number next to the wine. If you want the wine side of the sum, the wine calorie calculator will do it for you.
Storing It
Keep it in a clean, sealed jar in the fridge. Advice on how long it lasts varies quite a lot: some recipe writers say a week, others say two or three. A fresh herb syrup has no preservative in it, so treat two weeks as the outer limit and trust your nose. Cloudy, fizzy or smelling of anything other than mint means it goes down the sink.
Freezing is the better answer if you made a big batch. Pour the cooled syrup into an ice cube tray, freeze it solid, and keep the cubes in a bag for up to six months. One cube is roughly one drink.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did my mint syrup turn bitter?
Almost always because the mint was boiled or left to steep for hours. Add the leaves after the pan comes off the heat, keep the steep between fifteen and thirty minutes, and use leaves without stems.
Why is my syrup brown instead of green?
Heat again. Mint leaves darken when they cook. A syrup made off the heat comes out pale gold with a green tint rather than bright green, which is normal. Anything genuinely green in a bottle has had help.
Can I use dried mint?
You can, but it tastes flat and dusty. If fresh mint is not available, five drops of mint extract stirred into plain cooled simple syrup gets you closer than dried leaves will.
How long does mint simple syrup last?
Two weeks in the fridge is a safe limit for a fresh herb syrup, and some sources say only one. Freeze it in ice cube trays if you want it to last months.
What wine goes with mint?
Light and fruity beats big and oaky. Prosecco, a soft Moscato or a dry rosé all work with mint. Heavy oaked reds and whites clash with it badly.
Can I make it without sugar?
Not really, because the sugar is what makes it a syrup and what keeps it from spoiling in three days. A honey syrup made with equal parts honey and warm water is the closest alternative.
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