Disgruntled Bee Recipe, a Bitter Twist on a Classic

The Disgruntled Bee is a simple twist on the classic cocktail The Bee's Knees. I love the simple but complex flavors of the traditional, but I wanted to see if I could add more richness and depth to it.

I was on an Amaro Nonino kick for a while and was like, why not split the gin base with that?

After just a couple of different variations of ratios, I was thrilled with the final result. It is one of my favorite cocktails that I have come up with in the past couple of years.

It's fun making this drink for people at the bar when they tell me they aren't huge gin fans because the gin isn't the dominant flavor of this cocktail.

They all mesh very well together.

How Did Disgruntled Bee Get Its Name?

I wanted to call the cocktail Bitter Bee because of the addition of Amaro. So when you think you have a name for a cocktail, you "Google" the potential name to see if it exists.

As usual, it already existed. It was created at the bar Milk & Honey and appeared on several websites and The Educated Barfly's YouTube channel.

The next step was to identify synonymous terms for bitter. I found "disgruntled" in my search and knew it had to be used.

That is how I came up with the name, Disgruntled Bee.