The Best Cocktails to Make With Honey

wdc tv news staff

May 7, 2025

Honey's distinctive floral, caramel-like flavor profile makes it a compelling ingredient for the bar. While plain honey can be mixed into drinks, its viscous texture firms up when chilled (such as in a cocktail tin with ice), making it more difficult to blend with other cold liquid ingredients. To more easily incorporate honey sweetness in cocktails, it's typically made into honey syrup by mixing the ingredient with equal parts hot water until dissolved.

Compared to simple syrup, honey syrup has more depth and complexity while also remaining light on the palate. Honey’s complex notes blend with a range of ingredients, but it pairs really well with spirits like bourbon, scotch, or gin. Bourbon has toffee-like notes that can be amplified by honey, scotch's smoky aromas are enhanced by a bit of sweetness, and gin's herbaceous qualities can be matched by floral-inflected honey.

Honey is also a classic match for citrus, particularly lemon. In the Gold Rush, a riff on a Whiskey Sour, honey syrup softens tart lemon juice and plays off the warming notes of bourbon; in a Bee’s Knees, honey sweetness is offset by the bracing citrus, too. Here are 13 drinks to make with a single jar of honey.

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Honey Mint Julep

Greg Dupree / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen

The Honey Mint Julep riffs on a classic Mint Julep by swapping honey syrup for simple syrup or sugar. Just like a regular Mint Julep, mint is muddled with the honey syrup, bourbon is added, and then the drink is topped with crushed ice. As the ice melts and the drink dilutes, the flavors soften and the cocktail lengthens.

Penicillin

Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling by Oset Babür-Winter

While similar to a Whiskey Sour, the Penicillin is a lighter cocktail with sweet and sour flavors alongside a warming, welcome hit of ginger. A honey-ginger syrup serves as the sweetener, adding richness and a kick of heat at the same time. Smoky scotch adds another layer of complexity to this delicious drink.

Bee's Knees

Tim Nusog / Food & Wine

This classic honey and gin combination has roots in the cocktail scene of 1920s Paris. It's one of the most well-known riffs on the classic Gin Sour and consists of gin, honey, and lemon juice. Honey is a natural pairing with gin, as both can offer highly botanical and unique profiles.

Irish Buck

Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling by Liberty Fennell

The Irish Buck is a classic sweet-and-sour fizzy drink much like the Tom Collins or a Moscow Mule which has a spirit, a citrus, a sweetener, and something bubbly. For the Irish Buck that’s whiskey, lemon juice, honey syrup, and ginger beer. Fresh basil is the perfect finishing touch.

Hot Toddy

Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling by Lucy Simon

Made with hot water, honey, and whiskey (we prefer bourbon), and a stick or two of cinnamon, you likely already have everything you need to make a Hot Toddy in your pantry at home. In fact, one of the best things about the drink is how simple staples come together and transform with a change in temperature — the honey melts into the bourbon, and the aroma of the cinnamon is amplified with the heat of the cocktail.

Gold Rush

Food & Wine / Photo by Jen Causey / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen

Honey syrup transformed this Whiskey Sour into a modern classic. The Gold Rush was created at the late Sasha Petraske’s legendary cocktail bar Milk & Honey in the early 2000s. The simple, three-ingredient Gold Rush follows the 2:1:1 template — two parts bourbon, one part honey syrup, and one part lemon juice. The floral, honey sweetness amps up bourbon’s vanilla and caramel notes and lemon juice counteracts this sweetness and lightens the cocktail.

Airmail

Greg Dupree / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen

Invented right after Prohibition, the Airmail's recipe first appeared in a leaflet for Bacardi rum in the early 1930s and it popularized among bartenders and later appeared in cocktail books in the 1940s. This rum cocktail is rooted in the Daiquiri, with a French 75 spin. White rum, fresh lime juice, and honey syrup hew close to the structure of a traditional Daiquiri, while a splash of Champagne to top things off adds a French 75 flair.

Japanese Lemon Sour

Food & Wine / Photo by Brie Goldman / Food Styling by Kelsey Moylan / Prop Styling by Gabriel Greco

Lemon Sours (also known as Lemon Chu-his, or “Chuhais,” the colloquial term for Shochu Highballs) are a stalwart on izakaya menus throughout Japan. This is a tart and lightly sweet highball cocktail is made by combining shochu, fresh lemon juice, club soda, honey syrup as the sweetener, and a pinch of salt for balance.

Strawberry-Honey Lemonade

Greg Dupree / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen

This refreshing drink is nostalgia in a glass. Strawberry-Honey Lemonade is a riff on classic strawberry lemonade made by combining fresh strawberries, lemon juice, honey, and water in a blender, then straining out any solids. In lieu of granulated sugar or simple syrup, honey serves as the sweetener, adding a depth and floral sweetness that pairs well with the strawberries.

Bourbon Revival

Food & Wine / Photo by Greg DuPree / Food Styling by Julian Hensarling / Prop Styling by Christina Daley

The Bourbon Revival is a dressed-up whiskey highball cocktail featuring lemon juice, creme de cassis, honey syrup, a dash of Angostura bitters, and a mint and lemon garnish. The honey brings out the sweetness in the whiskey and the berry notes in the creme de cassis.

Matcha Whiskey Highball

Chelsea Kyle / Food Styling by Drew Aichele

A little matcha goes a long way in this simple, festive highball recipe. Japanese whisky, lemon, honey, and matcha green tea combine in this refreshing highball cocktail. It's just sweet enough with a grassy finish.

Apple-Brandy Hot Toddy

Chelsea Kyle / Food Styling by Drew Aichele

This French spin on a classic Hot Toddy is made with a slug of Calvados or another apple brandy. The brandy adds a sweet, deep caramel flavor you can’t get from whiskey alone. A few tablespoons of honey adds amplifies the fruitiness of the apple brandy and adds richness.

Once Upon a Paris Bar

Frederick Hardy II / Food Styling by Margaret Monroe Dickey / Prop Styling by Christine Keely

A riff on the classic Sidecar, the Once Upon a Paris Bar cocktail is the brainchild of Oisin Kelly, bar manager at The Sidecar in Dublin’s Westbury Hotel. Kelly uses the traditional base ingredients of a sidecar, a citrus-rich cocktail made with orange liqueur and freshly squeezed lemon juice, but adds an extra kick with the addition of Irish whiskey and honey syrup.

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