Bee Nice


This cocktail is our variation on the prohibition classic Bee’s Knees. The traditional Bee’s Knees is a straightforward combination of gin, honey, and lemon juice. It was developed at a time when gin wasn’t what you would call high quality. Actually, it was barely drinkable and required the addition of the lemon and honey to mask its flavor. Thankfully we don’t have that problem now! 
One of the drinkable spirits we have been enjoying is from the kind people at Bluewater Organic Distilling – who recently sent us a bottle of their new Wintersun Aquavit. This is a clear, crisp aquavit with citrus and anise notes. More people are discovering aquavit – a traditional Scandinavian spirit, and using it as a gin or vodka substitute in classic cocktails (with varying degrees of success). We thought herbal notes of Wintersun Aquavit would be best complimented by honey and some citrus – which brought us to the Bee’s Knees recipe. We then set about experimenting with ratios and ingredients and came up with our preferred combination, which involved Cointreau and grapefruit bitters, along with honey-thyme simple syrup and fresh lemon juice.

While the Artist got to work creating watercolor paintings to pair with our cocktail, I sat down to write up this blog post and flipped through several cocktail books to see what other Aquavit cocktail recipes are out there. The Death & Co. Modern Classic Cocktail book includes a page that features aquavit recipes. To my horror/surprise the first recipe was quite close to the one we had felt such pride in developing! Well, I guess we can feel good that our tastes align with these cocktail masters. Compared to our Bee Nice, Death & Co’s Great Northern cocktail has the additional ingredient of Lillet Blanc, doesn’t include bitters and is served over crushed ice. We’re going to mix up one of those next!

For now, we’re quite pleased with our Bee Nice cocktail and grateful to the nice folks at Bluewater Distilling for sending us the bottle of their new release. 

Cheers!... and let's BE(E) NICE

Bee Nice

2 ounces Aquavit (Bluewater Distilling Wintersun Aquavit)
½ ounce Cointreau
½ ounce Honey Thyme Simple Syrup (recipe below)
¾ ounce fresh lemon juice
dash of Grapefruit bitters (Dashfire Bitters)

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice cubes. Shake well and strain into a chilled cocktail coup. Garnish with a lemon twist and a sprig of thyme.


Honey Thyme Simple Syrup

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup orange blossom honey
1/2 cup (packed) of lemon thyme sprigs

Combine honey and water in a small saucepan and bring to a low boil. Add thyme and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove pan from heat, cover and let steep for 15 minutes. Cool to room temperature and strain through a sieve. Put in a covered bottle and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.

Note: See our Old Thyme Cocktail recipe for another drink using this syrup.

Pollination - original watercolor by The Cocktail Artist
 
Bees - original watercolor by The Cocktail Artist


Popular posts from this blog

Cherry Capital Old Fashioned

Image
Cherry Capital Old Fashioned - original watercolor painting by The Cocktail Artist If you've read some of our previous posts (such as the Up North Raspberry and Rye or the Grand Mariner Cocktail) you know that we're fans of the bourbon and rye produced by The Traverse City Whiskey Co . Traverse City, Michigan is known as the "Cherry Capital" for being the area with the largest production of tart cherries in the United States. In Traverse City, you will find wonderful freshwater beaches, lots of summer tourists, and (of course) cherries! You can attend the Cherry Festival in July, go to the Cherryland Mall, and fly into Cherry Capital airport. So the folks at Traverse City Whiskey (naturally) produce an American Cherry Edition of their bourbon. Here in the Nation's Capital we were lucky enough to find this cherry bourbon at our local liquor store. It's a nice bourbon for sipping neat, but during #OldFashionedOctober we also tried it in an Old Fashioned and
Read more

Lemon Bergamot Gimlet

Image
In case you don’t know us personally, or haven’t read the bio on our blog , you may not realize the “The Cocktail Artist” is really a partnership between two architects (who also happen to be married to each other). One of us comes up with the recipes, does the photography, and writes the blog posts – the other one creates all of the original artwork and offers opinions on the cocktail recipes. Being architects, we sometimes let our design-sense get the better of us – meaning we have been known to purchase a bottle of booze because we like the design of the bottle.  Occasionally this backfires, but rest assured (with some creative mixology or a bit of barrel-aging) we have always been able to make use of the contents of those impulse-buy bottles. Right now, two of the most attractive bottles in our liquor cabinet contain Italian spirits – Malfy Gin Con Limone and Italicus . Italy has always been a design trendsetter, so it’s not surprising that these bottles stand out (they ev
Read more

Amalfi Martini

Image
Darn! Why didn’t we buy those airline tickets to Italy when they were cheap? It would be so nice to be lounging in a beautiful Italian seaside town right now.  The Amalfi region, on Italy's west coast, is known for it's production of lemon liqueur and fine writing and art paper - sounds like the perfect place for us! Oh well, maybe it would be better to be there during the off season. Italy is probably packed with American tourists right now. Let's  just pull out the watercolor paints and the cocktail shaker and bring a bit of la dolce vita  to our patio. Our Amalfi Martini (naturally) features limoncello. It's a fairly low-alcohol liqueur, so we boost the proof of this cocktail by adding our vodka of choice - District Made Vodka by One Eight Distilling. If you are using a vodka that doesn't have much flavor on it's own (which, honestly, is most vodka) you may want to add a couple dashes of citrus bitters to this recipe. This just wouldn't be an Ita
Read more

The Last Call

Image
This post is a week late, but this blog is our hobby (not our real job) so we’re not going to worry about it. Anyhow, we came up with this drink for Mardi Gras as the “last call” before the beginning of Lent – a time when some of us stop drinking for 40 days (we’ll let you know how that works out). The name “Last Call” also references the classic “Last Word” cocktail. The Last Word is really a perfect cocktail. It’s equal parts of four ingredients (gin, Green Chartreuse, Maraschino Liqueur, and lime) and a superb balance of tart, herbal, and sweet. It’s one of our fallback cocktails – one that we mix up when we can’t make up our mind about what we want to drink.  Another classic that we regularly enjoy is the Aviation Cocktail. The Aviation is another gin cocktail and is one of the few that uses Crème de Violette – a sweet, floral liqueur that is typically a deep purple hue. It takes mixing quite a few Aviations to go through a bottle of Crème de Violette, so it’s probably
Read more

Douglas Fir Martini

Image
This was one of our very early blog posts. Now that the holiday season is here it seems like a good time to revisit it. Our cocktail recipe remains unchanged, but we wanted to add some information about the ingredients and include a bit more artwork. This martini, with it’s pine forest aroma, is our antidote to holiday stress. Mix up a couple of these to help you through your decorating, gift-wrapping, etc… Doesn’t enjoying a cocktail while you relax in front of the fireplace sound much nicer than struggling to get the Christmas tree in the stand? Along with The Cocktail  Artist's watercolors maybe we can give you the feeling you're walking through a pine forest instead of stressing out over some holiday preparations. At the heart of this cocktail is Clear Creek Distillery’s Douglas Fir Brandy . We discovered this unusual liqueur in our local liquor store a couple of years ago and just couldn’t resist giving it a try. Clear Creek calls it “a tree in a bottle”. It's m
Read more