The Bee’s Knees is an undisputed basic. A Prohibition-era gin bitter made with honey, it’s beloved, not simply due to its old-timey identify, but in addition as a result of it harks again to the “golden age” of cocktails. However for Bee’s Knees followers who need to department out, there’s a deep minimize that’s principally been left to historical past—till now. Enter the Bebbo.
The primary extant recipe now we have for the Bebbo comes from a little-known 1937 e-book out of New Orleans: Gerald Marco and Hyman Gale’s The How and When. The recipe takes the gin-lemon-honey mixture of the Bee’s Knees and provides orange juice—a easy change that rounds out the Prohibition basic’s sharp edges. In actual fact, Ted Haigh purposefully excluded the Bee’s Knees in his e-book Classic Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, making a notice within the Bebbo entry in regards to the orange-laced model’s superiority. Many years later, Michael Madrusan, proprietor of The Everleigh in Melbourne, Australia, additionally turned keen on the drink.
Again when his bar opened in 2011, Madrusan was poring over cocktail books for analysis. One in every of them was the 1977 basic Jones’ Full Barguide, an enormous compendium that comprises 1000’s of recipes, together with the Bebbo. (By the way, the e-book has acted as a significant inspiration, in breadth and variety of recipes, for the forthcoming Madrusan’s Cocktail Compendium.)
Each the Thirties and ’70s recipes name for about an oz and a half of gin, a good quantity of lemon and small quantities of orange juice, however the ensuing drink could be too bitter. For his model, Madrusan elevated the gin and orange quotients barely, whereas lowering the quantity of lemon, yielding a drink that he says has been extra balanced, and widespread with visitors.
The unique Thirties recipe requires dry gin, a alternative additionally implied within the Jones information, which was written at a time when “gin” had unequivocally come to imply the London dry fashion. Madrusan reaches for a bottling from Australian distiller 4 Pillars. The model’s Uncommon Dry gin combines spices like cardamom, star anise and cinnamon with “tons of citrus,” he says, parts that make the expression really feel tailored for the Bebbo. For Madrusan’s recipe, two ounces of the gin marries harmoniously with half an oz every of lemon and orange juices.
To provide the bitter its pleasing heft, The Everleigh’s home honey syrup is additional wealthy, with a honey-to-water ratio of three to 1. However what’s most necessary, Madrusan says, is the honey the bar makes use of: It comes from Victoria and has the distinctive profile of toffee and stewed fruit.
The Everleigh’s signature Bebbo, with its spiced gin and flavorful honey syrup, is bolstered by an fragrant garnish of Angostura bitters utilized in a stripe throughout the drink’s floor. The right line could be arduous to realize, says Madrusan, however “in case you get a transparent stripe, nicely completed, you.”
On a uncommon full shift behind the bar not too long ago, Madrusan says he was pleasantly stunned that visitors had been ordering the Bebbo all evening lengthy. It’s a kind of “positive issues,” he says, that has mass attraction. It’s virtually inconceivable to not like. “Nevertheless you take a look at this drink,” he says, “it’s only a banger.”
