25 Delicious Bourbon Cocktails You Need to Try

It mixes the flavor of bourbon (or rye, or scotch) with bitter, sweet and sour. This classic cocktail is one of the earliest and still one of the best - try it!

The Bourbon Smash is a refreshing cocktail made with simple ingredients. Its easy preparation make it great for both casual gatherings and formal events.

The Horse's Neck cocktail is known for its garnish - a lemon peel that twists up through the drink and drapes over the side. But wait until you taste it.

The Mint Julep is a bourbon cocktail recipe famous as the signature drink of the Kentucky Derby. This is an easy whiskey drink to love.

The Manhattan is a sophisticated classic cocktail featuring rye or bourbon with sweet vermouth. It's stirred with ice rather than shaken, and you can serve it on the rocks.

The Grumpy Old Man cocktail features bourbon, lime juice and ginger ale. It's a lot like the Moscow Mule, but with bourbon instead of vodka. This gives it more flavor, and you may find you like it even better.

The Mona Cocktail mixes three liquors that don’t often get to mingle
in the same glass: vodka, bourbon and light rum. It’s an interesting
blend, and the sour mix and Rose’s lime added to it make for a flavor
that once considered being sweet, but decided to be tangy instead.

The refreshing Brown Derby cocktail recipe features bourbon whiskey,
grapefruit juice and honey syrup. This citrusy drink is perfect for a
warm summer day.

The Frisco Sour is an old classic. The usual recipe for a sour is your main ingredient + lemon + simple syrup or sugar. But this drink uses Benedictine for sweetening.

The Haymaker cocktail blends orange and lime flavors with whiskey and vermouth. The flavor is complex, starting with fruity notes but ending on the smokiness of the whiskey.

The Opium cocktail blends bourbon with fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, tamarind syrup, lemon juice and poppy seed for a surprisingly refreshing flavor.

The Bourbon Black Hawk pairs bourbon with sloe gin, and the result is a tasty blend between the two. It's sweet, but not too sweet; fiery, but still smooth.

The Bourbon Daisy cocktail blends bourbon, lemon juice and grenadine
with a little bit of sugar. The result is a mildly sweet drink that
disguises the amount of bourbon within.

The Fox River Cocktail is bourbon based – specifically, it’s based on
two ounces of bourbon and not a lot else. This should tell you two
things about the drink.

Okay, the Bourbon and Sprite is one of those drinks where the title gives away the recipe. There's just no intrigue, no suspense - it just is what it is.

Recipe for the John Collins cocktail which is a lot like a Tom Collins. It's bourbon whiskey instead of gin, with lemon juice, superfine sugar and club soda.

The Ground Zero cocktail has a strange combination of flavors. Peppermint and mocha mingle with whiskey for a taste that's just plain hard to describe, and definitely not for everyone. It's sort of smoky and minty and earthy.

While the Whiskey Sour uses sugar to sweeten the bourbon whiskey, the Forester uses cherry liqueur for that purpose. Then a squeeze of lemon adds the final touch of zesty citrus.

The Algonquin is a very old classic that dates back to at least the
1930s. It features rye bourbon with dry vermouth and pineapple juice,
which makes for a sweet, easy-going, slightly tropical cocktail.

The Kentucky cocktail calls for two ounces of Kentucky bourbon and an
ounce of pineapple juice. That might sound like a strange combination,
but it actually works very well.

The Eskay Slammer is basically a root beer float in which three or
four ounces of the root beer has been replaced by bourbon. This is a
powerful drink – a double or better.

If you're looking for something that's both southern and sophisticated - the sort of drink that might once have been served in a gentleman's club down south - the Chapel Hill cocktail might be just what you're looking for.

The Whiskey Smash is basically a mojito with whiskey instead of rum and lemon instead of lime (because lemon works better with whiskey).

The Joe Collins cocktail could be thought of as a very interesting twist on the Jack and Coke. It uses scotch instead of bourbon, which isn't a big leap. But then it adds something really unexpected: sweet and sour - or, as I recommend instead, lemon juice and simple syrup.

Cemetery Cider is, as you might guess, an apple cider-based drink
recipe. It’s a bulk recipe, like a lot of cider cocktails, but you can
also make it by the glass.