This sweet high-quality ingredient is absolutely a must-have product in your home bar.
Honey is an incredible natural sweetener rich in vitamins, proteins and minerals. It comes in numerous varieties and has a terroir, which means that its taste highly depends on the climate conditions and place where honey is made. This sweetener tastes great, never goes bad, and can be mixed into a drink bringing all nice aromas and silky mouthfeel.
How to use honey in cocktails?
Just like the classic simple syrup, honey is used to sweeten cocktails. But, unlike simple syrup, it also adds delicious floral aromas to your finished drink. It perfectly balances citrus acidity in sours and delivers silky delicate notes to the drinks. Tastes amazing in gin, tequila, rum, and whisky cocktails.
Here is a quick and easy honey syrup recipe:
- 50ml - warm water
- 150ml - honey
Method: combine the ingredients and stir until the honey dissolves.
Try to avoid using raw honey in cocktails as honey in an ice-filled cocktail shaker won't mix in nicely. Instead, use this honey syrup. But if you are making hot cocktails, then it is ok to use raw honey as it dissolves nicely in warm drinks.
3 Must Mix Honey Cocktails
Tequila Honey Bee
A lingering combination of reposado tequila and honey syrup. This is a great summer tipple.
Ingredients:
- 60ml reposado tequila
- 30ml honey syrup
- 22ml lemon juice, freshly squeezed
- 2 dashes Angostura bitters
- lemon peel - to garnish
Method:
Pour the tequila, honey syrup and lemon juice into a shaker with ice, and shake until well-chilled. Strain into the glass over fresh ice, and top with 2 dashes of bitters. Garnish with a lemon peel.
Bee's Knees
As we've mentioned before, gin and honey are perfect marriage. Try this classic gin and honey cocktail.
Ingredients:
- 60ml - gin
- 15ml - honey syrup
- 30ml - lemon juice
- lemon twist - to garnish
Method:
Pour honey syrup, lemon juice and gin into a shaker filled with ice. Shake until the mixture is very cold. Strain the drink into a coupe or martini glass. Twist the lemon peel over the cocktail to release some of its oils, then drop it in. Enjoy!
Honeysuckle Daiquiri
This is a delcioous twist on classic Daiquiri with lineging flower notes and subtle sweetness. Give it a try.
Ingredients:
- 60 ml white rum
- 22.5 ml lime juice, freshly squeezed
- 22.5 ml honey syrup
Method:
Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker, add ice and give it a nice shake.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a lemon or lime wheel.
Best Honey Spirits to Try
With the growth of the craft movement, there appeared lots of great spirits with honey as a key ingredient. Here are three delicious honey spirits to try.
Warner's Honeybee Gin
Warner's Honeybee Gin is crafted with 28 botanicals such as lavender, rose, star anise, hibiscus flower, and honey from Warner's farm hives. Honey brings delicate and soft mouthfeel and a subtle sweetness layered on zesty citrus flavours and rich floral notes. This gin is created in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society to protect the pollinators.
Cooper King Dry Gin
Raw honey is an essential ingredient in the Cooper King Distillery award-winning Dry Gin.
Abbie Neilson, co-founder & director at Cooper King Distillery says that keeping bees is beneficial not just for the production of their carbon-negative gin, but for the environmental reasons as well. "It was important to use my father’s raw honey in the recipe, not only because it is delicious and adds a silky sweetness to the spirit, but also to support his beekeeping".
This is a juniper-led dry gin with rich cardamom notes, hints of floral honey and juicy citrus flavours.
Van Hunks Sparkling Mead
Another great tipple made with honey is a Van Hunks Sparkling Mead. This unique libation is made just of three ingredients: honey, yeasts, and water.This is an all-natural sparkling quaff.
Van Hunks meadery is located at the foot of Table Mountain and their mead is made from honey produced by bees that feast on Fynbos wildflowers. "Cape Town has a different bee species to the rest of the world know as Apis Mellifera Capensis, where there rest of the world has Apis Mellifera Scutellate. So we have a species here that occurs nowhere else" - mentions Dr Ernst Thompson from Van Hunks Drinks.
The makers use a patented dry fermentation process to ferment the honey and produce completely dry base mead without any additional sugars and flavourings. This is a true sipping pleasure.