Simple syrup does a job. It doesn't do anything else. BG Reynolds Rich Demerara is built on the ratio serious bars actually use — two parts sugar to one part water, not the watery 1:1 most people stir up at home — which gives a drink real body and lets you sweeten it without watering it down. But the ratio is only half of it. The sugar is Demerara: partially refined, still carrying its molasses, with a deep cane flavor plain white sugar flat-out doesn't have. And it's cooked so the sugar stays in solution — none of those crystal shards that settle in the bottom of a homemade batch.

Reach for it first in an Old Fashioned: half an ounce, a couple dashes of aromatic bitters, a spritz of orange peel, and the whiskey gets richer instead of thinner. It earns its keep in tiki too — a Jungle Bird or a Queen's Park Swizzle — and it'll quietly improve a cup of coffee or a glass of lemonade. Anywhere a recipe says simple syrup and means it, this does the same job with a lot more to say.

Once opened, refrigerate and use within 90 days — unopened, it keeps for two years from the date of manufacture.