The Bees' Needs Cocktail Recipe

To toast Steve and Alys's new book, Letters to a Beekeeper, our Lisa and her good friend Marcos, from Crazy Moon Cocktails, created a honey cocktail for us, we call it "The Bees' Needs" in homage to the little ladies.

The Bees' Needs

For one serve

25ml Sipsmith Gin

25ml Honey & Tea Syrup

Honey for garnishing the jars with peppercorns.

Ice

1 Packet of Pink Peppercorns (we got ours from our neighbours at Spa Terminus, Spice Mountain

Fever-Tree Tonic Water to top up

For the Honey & Tea Syrup

4 parts tea (1 Joe's Tea St. Clement's Lemon teabag to 150ml hot water)

1 part honey (Salisbury)

1 part lemon juice

A good couple of hours before you want to make your cocktails, steep one St. Clement's Lemon teabag in 150ml of hot water. Leave for a couple of hours to infuse. Mix the tea infusion with the honey and lemon juice to create the syrup.

Crush the pink peppercorns. Apply honey to the rim of the glass/ jar, either by dribbling or by dipping into a plate with honey on, then roll half the rim in the crushed pink peppercorns.

If you're using jars you can mix straight in the jar and give it a good stir, or pre-mix if pouring into coups. Mix 25ml of syrup and 25ml of gin and stir with ice, top up the jar with tonic water to taste.

 Then toast the bees.