Honey Syrup
Honey syrup is honey thinned with warm water so it dissolves smoothly and mixes evenly into a cold cocktail, since raw honey is too thick to incorporate on its own. It carries honey's floral, slightly earthy sweetness. It adds more character than plain sugar syrup.
Common uses
- sweetener in whiskey or gin sours
- adds floral depth to hot drinks
Buying & storage
Weeks once opened: Diluted honey ferments more readily than honey does. Refrigerate it and look at it before pouring.
Buying: made easily at home by warming honey with water at roughly a 1:1 ratio until dissolved
Storage: refrigerate in a sealed bottle and use within a month
In depth
Understanding honey syrup
How it is made, where it comes from, what it pairs with, and how it behaves in an alcohol-free drink.
How it's made
Honey loosened with warm water, usually around three parts honey to one water, because neat honey is too viscous to disperse in a cold drink. Warm, never hot — boiling drives off the aromatics that make honey worth using rather than sugar.
Origin
Honey predates sugar as a sweetener by millennia and appears in drinks long before the cocktail; its modern bar use as a loosened syrup is a practical solution to honey's refusal to dissolve in cold liquid.
What it pairs with
Whisky, lemon, ginger and tea are the natural partners. Different honeys vary enormously — a strong heather or chestnut honey is an ingredient in its own right, not a neutral sweetener.
In alcohol-free drinks
- The faint bitterness honey carries is genuinely useful in alcohol-free drinks, where bitterness is scarce
- The default sweetener for hot alcohol-free drinks, where its aroma is amplified by the heat
Before it goes
Use up honey syrup
Ranked by how much of it each drink uses and how little else it needs — the ones at the top will not send you back to the shop.
- Mulled Wine
Uses 60ml. Also needs full-bodied red wine, orange slices, whole cloves, cinnamon sticks.
- Alcohol-Free Hot Toddy
Uses 25ml. Also needs fresh lemon juice, cinnamon stick (1 whole).
- Gold Rush
Uses 22ml. Also needs bourbon, fresh lemon juice.
- Hot Toddy
Uses 20ml. Also needs blended scotch or bourbon, fresh lemon juice.
Recipes
Cocktails containing this ingredient
Stand-in
Where honey syrup is a recommended substitute
Recipes that name it as a swap for something else, with what it replaces.
- Daiquiriin place of simple syrup
- Mai Taiin place of orgeat syrup
- Caipirinhain place of sugar
- Southsidein place of simple syrup
- Gin Fizzin place of simple syrup
- Gin Basil Smashin place of simple syrup
- Vieux Carréin place of bénédictine
- John Collinsin place of simple syrup
- French Connectionin place of amaretto
- Hot Buttered Rumin place of brown sugar
- Queen's Park Swizzlein place of simple syrup
- Alcohol-Free Margaritain place of agave syrup
- Lime Rickeyin place of simple syrup
- Alcohol-Free Irish Coffeein place of demerara or soft brown sugar
Swap it
Possible substitutions
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