A carnival of technology

It makes your kids fat. It gives you diabetes. It’s a symptom of broken farm policy. It’s a symptom of broken trade policy. It just doesn’t taste the same.

High fructose corn syrup is a solution of usually 55% fructose and 45% glucose produced from corn starch and frequently used as a sweetener in the United States and Canada. It’s difficult to substantiate some of the claims made against HFCS, but it’s hard not to at least feel a little uneasy about the stuff. Well, this America, so vote with your dollars; if you don’t care for HFCS, look for alternatives. You might need to learn a little Spanish before you buy your next Coke, but for the most part there are readily available alternatives. Tonight, let’s take a look at one of the areas oft neglected: things to mix with booze.

While worries about antioxidants and the marketing of companies like POM have created some abominably named cocktails like the pomtini or the pomarita, using pomegranate in drinks is not a new idea. The tequila sunrise, the Roy Rogers (and its sister drink, the Shirley Temple), some variations of the Bacardi cocktail are just a few drinks made with grenadine syrup, named from grenade, the French word for pomegranate. Grenadine today, however, is usually thought of as being cherry flavored, though a cherry in the same sense as cherry Kool-Aid, which is to say that it’s red and doesn’t taste much like any fruit at all. Let’s take a look at the label for Rose’s, the most popular brand of grenadine syrup:

INGREDIENTS: HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, WATER, CITRIC ACID, NATURAL AND
ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, SODIUM CITRATE, SODIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVATIVE), RED 40,
BLUE 1

Wow, gross. So how hard is it to make your own? Of course, you’ll first need some pomegranate juice. According to legend that I just made up, the pomegranate was given by Ahura Mazda to the Persians as a test. Those who bit in faced a mouthful of bitter pulp. Those who began to pick apart the seeds but grew weary and abandoned the fruit were struck down in a shower of free radicals. Only the patient man, he who carefully picked each seed away from the labyrinthine fruit, could understand the secrets of the universe. Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore. There are machines that can do that for you, just go to the store and buy a bottle of juice. Pomegranate faces a problem similar to cranberry in that it’s not really drinkable on its own, so most of the juices you’ll encounter have been flavored with other fruits. Pure pomegranate is out there for the persistent, and that might not even actually matter; depending on how you want the syrup to taste, POM or something similar might work just fine.

I found one website that happens to advocate POM and has a summary of a couple basic processes. You can either just mix some cold juice with some sugar and shake it like a Polaroid picture, or you can reduce the juice and mix that with the sugar. The problem I had making the reduction was that scalded pomegranate really doesn’t taste very good. Maybe I got it too hot, but it was very sour and a little bitter by the time I was done. I might take another shot at it, maybe with POM. As for the cold process, the problem I found there was that it doesn’t get very syrupy. I know that I won’t get anything near the molasses thick Rose’s, but I’d like something with a bit of body. One of the comments to that article suggests using simple syrup instead of sugar, and while that seems a good path to take, I found that adding more and more syrup to try to make a thicker grenadine made something that tasted less like pomegranate and more like just sugar syrup.

The method I settled on was to use the cold process in the article—equal parts pomegranate juice and sugar—with the addition of a dash of simple syrup. I think I’ll try experimenting a little more with this; maybe I’ll get out the rest of the acacia powder and see what happens. In the meantime the slightly syrupy pomegranate juice serves its purpose: it’s red, it’s sweet, and it has more flavor than colored corn syrup.

Next up: tonic water! All I need to do is find some quinine and figure out the right blend of the eleven herbs and spices. Sounds easy enough.