Honey in cold and alcoholic drinks
Every failure with honey in a cold drink has the same cause. Honey is a supersaturated sugar solution at roughly eighty per cent sugar, and it will not disperse into anything cold. Make a syrup first and the entire category opens up.
The principle
Honey does not dissolve cold. Cut it with an equal weight of warm water into a syrup, and it behaves like any other sweetener — including in the shaker.
Why this works the way it does
A three-to-one or one-to-one honey syrup, made by stirring honey into warm water and cooling it, is the single technique that makes honey usable in cold drinks. It keeps for a couple of weeks refrigerated, pours accurately, and dissolves instantly. Without it, honey in an iced drink is a lump at the bottom of the glass and a lesson learned.
Spirits are the interesting half of this. Whisky and honey is a real pairing rather than a hot-toddy cliché: a peated whisky against a heather or a honeydew honey is smoke against smoke and malt against malt, and the two hold each other up. Rum takes molasses-heavy honeys for the same reason. Gin, being botanical, takes the herbal Mediterranean honeys.
Acid is what stops a honey drink being cloying. Lemon, lime and vinegar-based shrubs all give the sugar something to push against, and the hot-water-honey-lemon standby is a genuinely well-constructed drink rather than folklore — although its reputation as a remedy rests on the honey soothing a throat rather than on anything the lemon contributes.
One caution worth stating plainly. Honey and alcohol together are the base of mead, which is fermentation rather than mixing, and a honey syrup left at room temperature will eventually ferment on its own — honey carries osmotolerant yeasts that wake up as soon as it is diluted. Refrigerate it.
Pairings in this group
- Cocktails21 honeysHow do you use honey in a cocktail?
- Whisky85 honeysWhich honey goes with whisky?
- Hot toddy77 honeysWhich honey makes the best hot toddy?
- Lemonade and cold water119 honeysWhich honey should go in homemade lemonade?
- Smoothies and yoghurt drinks130 honeysWhich honey goes in a smoothie?
- Beer89 honeysWhich honey goes with beer, and which survives brewing?
Guides behind these pairings
- How honey pairing actually worksFour mechanisms decide nearly every honey pairing, and none of them is a matter of taste. Learn them and you can pair a honey with a food this site has never heard of.
- Honey and chocolateCocoa percentage decides everything. Above seventy per cent the honey has bitterness to answer; below forty it has sugar and dairy to cut through, which is the opposite job.
- Honey on bread and at breakfastThe one place where a honey's physical behaviour outranks its flavour. A honey that runs off the toast has failed regardless of how good it is.
- Honey and fruitFruit is already sweet and already acidic, so honey is not there to sweeten it. Raw, it adds aroma; cooked, it browns. Two different jobs needing two different honeys.
- Honey in dessertsHow much of a honey survives a dessert depends almost entirely on how hot it got and for how long. Custards keep nearly everything; cakes keep almost nothing.
- Cooking and baking with honeyHoney is not a drop-in replacement for sugar. It is sweeter, it brings water, it is acidic, and it browns earlier — four differences, each with a specific consequence.
Other pairing groups
Tools for choosing
- Pairing finder
I am eating this — which honey goes with it?
- Flavour selector
I like this taste — which honeys have it?
- Honey finder
Which honey should I buy for what I actually want to do with it?
- Honey substitute calculator
How much honey do I use instead of sugar, and what else has to change?