Mint Syrup

That is: lemon mint syrup, because I made it with lemon. You know, it is fine with lime too!

Ingredients:

• 6 cups sugar
• 4 cups water
• 2 teaspoons citric acid
• 1 lemon
• 2 large bunches of young mint (actually spermint)

Preparation:

We take fresh, young, healthy, leafy mint branches. These are washed in plenty of water and then the water is shaken off. This we repeate several times.

Slice the lemon into rings.

Recipe:

Take a large 3-4 quart pot.for the syrup.

If you want to give the syrup a light color, you may caramelize 1 tablespoon sugar in the buttom of the pot. When the sugar starts to brown, pour on the water, add the rest of the sugar and the citric acid, and heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. It is enough to simmer until bubbles come up, you don't have bring it to a rolling boil.

    If you do not want to add color to the syrup, then simply pour the water, sugar, citric acid into the pot and heat over a low heat until the sugar dissolves.

Pick mint leaves off the branches, and put them in another, similarly large pot. Pour the hot syrup over the mint leaves with care, and then we place lemon rings on top, this way squeezing down the mint leaves, plus the lemon gives the syrup a pleasant taste.

    Cover the syrup and let it stand in a cool place until the next day, but only for a maximum of 24 hours. Mint tends to stink, so it is not good to soak it for more than 24 hours.

Next day you should filter the syrup. The mint and lemons left in the filter shuod be pressed a little with a spoon. Make the clear syrup boil again and still hot fill it into clear bottles that are kept warm. (Fill the clean bottles with hot water and pour the water out of them before filling.) It is advisable to keep low heat under the syrup, during the filling procedure, to be sure that the syrup will not cool.

    After filling all the syrup into bottles keep them hot until next day e.g. in an insulated freezer box.

    It is adviseable to wait at least 1 month for opening the bottles, because the homemade syrups will still mature, will  be more flavored and will be cleaner in the bottle, but of course they are very delicious even when freshly made.

Adding:

This amount gave me 8 cups of syrup. I filled a 4 cups and a 3 cups bottle, and the rest went into a 2 cups  beer bottle. We tasted the syrup from this small portion. It was delicious and refreshing with. a nice mint, and a good lemon taste. I wonder how much stronger the mint flavor will be after one month. This will allow me to decide how much mint to use next for the recipe.