Aperol Sour

You get a different drink, not a stronger version of this one. Campari is drier, considerably more bitter and over 20% alcohol, so 8 ml of syrup is nowhere near enough. Take the syrup to 15 ml and the lemon down to 20 ml and it comes back into line.

Try it without and taste. Aperol brings plenty of its own sugar, so the 8 ml of syrup is a correction rather than the sweetening — it lands as body, filling out the middle of the drink. Pull it and you get something sharper and noticeably hollow at the finish.

Better than most sours, since there is barely any alcohol to knock the balance around. Build it at ten times the recipe in a jug, chill it hard, and pour over a single large cube so the melt does the last of the work. Squeeze the lemon the same afternoon; it fades by evening.

Probably not. Thin usually means over-diluted or under-chilled rather than under-sweetened. Use fewer, larger cubes and strain onto a fresh one. If it's still flat, two dashes of orange bitters and a pinch of salt will do more for it than sugar ever will.

A classic Aperol Sour calls for 60 ml (2 oz) Aperol, 22 ml (0.75 oz) Fresh lemon juice, 8 ml (0.25 oz) Simple syrup. That single-serve spec scales cleanly — the recipe above converts it to oz and multiplies it for 2–4 drinks.

A standard Aperol Sour is roughly 7% ABV once mixed (before ice melt softens it further). That makes it a relatively light, sessionable drink — similar in strength to a beer.

An Aperol Sour is shaken — the rule of thumb is to shake anything with citrus juice. About 13 seconds with plenty of ice chills and dilutes it correctly.