Time for a Drink: Bee's Knees
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? Hit up the archives. Cheers!
You may be thinking of Christmas shopping and holiday planning today, but remember that today is Repeal Day: the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition. Events are taking place across the country, but there’s no need to go looking for a celebration when you can create your own.
If you’re searching for the appropriate cocktail, then allow me to suggest the Bee’s Knees. This is a speakeasy classic, and not necessarily in a good way: thanks to the Volstead Act, professionally manufactured booze was in short supply, leading many drinkers to turn to slapdash spirits such as the notorious bathtub gin. To mask the flavor of these noxious spirits, plenty of strong flavors and rich sweeteners were added to the cocktail shaker, resulting in some bloodcurdling bad concoctions.
The Bee’s Knees was among those drinks with a bad reputation, but it’s easily redeemed using a decent gin and an easier hand with the shaker. As drinks writer David Embury noted in his landmark The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks in 1949:
Early in the book I spoke in disparaging terms of the Bee’s Knees. This, however, was because as it originally came out during prohibition days it consisted of equal parts lemon juice, honey, and gin. If made as a variation of the standard Gin Sour, merely substituting honey for the sugar syrup, it is acceptable.
Acceptable? Hell, it’s delicious. Take a moment to mix one this weekend, if for no other reason than because you legally can.
About the author: Paul Clarke blogs about cocktails at The Cocktail Chronicles and writes regularly on spirits and cocktails for Imbibe magazine. He lives in Seattle, where he works as a writer and magazine editor.
Bee's Knees
Ingredients
2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
1/2 ounce honey syrup*
Procedure
Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker, stir briefly to dissolve honey syrup, then fill with ice. Shake well for 10 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
* Mixing honey with hot water makes it easier to mix in a drink. To make honey syrup, simply combine equal parts honey and hot water, and stir until dissolved. Keep remainder refrigerated.
View other entries from Cocktail Concoctions.
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1 Comment:
Looks like a way to ruin good gin, but I'll give it a try. It's probably better with simple sugar syrup rather than honey, but...
Savory1 at 6:04PM on 12/05/08