Ingredients:

Gin, 2oz

Lemon juice, 75 oz.

Honey simple syrup, 75 oz. (3 parts honey by weight to 1 part hot water)

Combine all ingredients in a shaker tin. Add a large chunk of ice. Shake very hard until chilled. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. 

In the United States during Prohibition in the 1920s-1930s calling something “the bee’s knees” was considered very high praise and it perfectly suits this classic concoction originating from that era. An apt name and also witty quipping on the use of honey as the sweetening agent. Oddly omitted from many cocktail books of the era it first appears in Frank Meier’s The Artistry of Mixing Drinks, 1937. 

This mixture, like the Daiquiri, is elemental. Perfectly balanced, full of body, texture and flavor. In modern times it is my belief that this drink was perfected at New York’s Milk & Honey, now Attaboy in the East Village. There, the use of a rich 3:1 honey syrup became standard as well as the practice of shaking with a large chunk of ice in a two-part metal on metal Boston shaker, now essential at cocktail bars the world over. The choices of honey and gin are seemingly endless. Beefeater works very well with lemon. Plymouth works better due to its rounder body and creamy sweetness. Barrel aged gins also work wonders adding depth of flavor and color. Barr Hill from Vermont uses honey from their own apiary to balance the sweetness of their gins. The regular gin as well as the barrel-aged Tom Cat from them makes a transcendental version of the drink.