The Bee's Knees is a Prohibition-era classic: gin, lemon, honey. The honey was originally there to mask the taste of bad bathtub gin, which is a slightly unromantic origin for a drink whose name was 1920s slang for the best.
We asked Jayden Ong, formerly of Jigger & Pony and runner-up at Diageo World Class Singapore in 2017, to build a version around our Trigona honey.
The reason it works: most honey in a cocktail just adds sweetness. Trigona honey is sour as well as sweet, with citrussy notes of mango, tamarind and calamansi, and it's roughly 17% sugar rather than the 80% typical of ordinary honey. In a gin sour, that acidity does something ordinary honey can't. Less sugar, more complexity.
Cinnamon Bee's Knees
Recipe by Jayden Ong. Makes one.
Ingredients
- 30ml gin
- 15ml fresh lemon juice
- 3 teaspoons Anaya Trigona honey
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- Ice cubes
Equipment
- Cocktail shaker or a mason jar with a tight lid
- Small sieve or strainer
- Coupe or rocks glass
Method
- Break one cinnamon stick into pieces and drop it into the shaker.
- Add the honey and lemon juice. Stir until the honey has dissolved into the lemon, which is easier than trying to dissolve it once the gin and ice are in.
- Add the gin and fill with ice.
- Shake hard for about fifteen seconds, until the outside of the shaker frosts.
- Double strain into your glass to catch the cinnamon fragments.
- Garnish with the second cinnamon stick.
Notes
If your honey is stubborn, warm it very slightly first, but keep it warm rather than hot. Heat degrades the compounds that make this honey worth using.
The sourness of Trigona honey means you may want slightly less lemon than a standard Bee's Knees calls for. Taste and adjust.
For a longer drink, top with soda over ice.
A Non-Alcoholic Version
Same method, swapping the gin for a non-alcoholic gin alternative, or simply 30ml of strong chilled chamomile tea. Top with tonic. The honey and cinnamon carry it well enough that it doesn't taste like a compromise.
One Honest Note
This is a cocktail. Trigona honey has genuinely interesting properties, and we've written about them at length elsewhere, but putting it in gin doesn't make the gin good for you. Alcohol is alcohol.
Drink it because it's a properly good cocktail with an unusual honey in it. That's reason enough.
For over-18s only. Please drink responsibly.
Try Raw Trigona Honey (Active 25+), or browse the Immunity Care range.