Homemade Cinnamon Syrup
Real cinnamon-stick syrup—water steeped with broken cinnamon sticks, strained, then dissolved with sugar at a 1:1 ratio. The required prerequisite for Donn Beach’s Don’s Mix (and therefore the canonical 1934 Zombie), and useful across the warm-spice corners of the exotic-cocktail canon. Twenty minutes of work, an hour of waiting; keeps two weeks refrigerated.
Ingredients
- 4 cinnamon sticks, broken
- 2 cups water
- 2 cups white sugar
Directions
Break the cinnamon sticks into rough pieces so the spice surface is exposed. Drop them into a small saucepan with 2 cups of water.
Bring to a low simmer and hold for 5 minutes—long enough to start extracting the spice without scorching it.
Remove from heat and let the sticks steep in the hot water for an hour. The water will turn a warm amber and the cinnamon smell will be obvious in the kitchen.
Strain out the cinnamon pieces through a fine-mesh strainer. Return the infused water to the pan over low heat.
Add 2 cups of white sugar and stir gently until fully dissolved. Don’t let it boil—slow dissolve protects the spice character.
Cool to room temperature, bottle, and refrigerate. Keeps two weeks in the fridge; the spice fades after that.
This is the syrup Don’s Mix calls for—two parts fresh grapefruit juice to one part cinnamon syrup, then into a canonical Zombie. Also useful in falernum-adjacent builds and any cocktail that calls for warm-spice depth without the clove and ginger of full falernum.