Honey Lemonade (Lemonade Recipe with Honey)

This honey lemonade is easy and fast to make with simple ingredients. It pairs beautifully with any savory meal or tastes great on its own.

It’s been HOT HOT HOT in the Midwest this summer, and I’d venture to say it’s probably been hot where you are, too. It seems like this is the new normal, so I’m doing my best to stay cool with lots of cold drinks.

While I can wake up with a lemon smoothie, and icy cocktails like strawberry Moscow mules are great in the evening, I also like an alcohol-free option that can be sipped all afternoon. I like to rotate between mango lemonade, agave lemonade, and this honey lemonade.

This is a refreshing lemon mint drink that pairs beautifully with any savory meal, a snack like spicy potato chips or any of my Memorial Day appetizers, or tastes great just on its own!

This honey lemonade is easy to make with ingredients you probably already have on hand.

The ingredients for this lemonade recipe with honey couldn’t be simpler – water, fresh lemon juice and honey. Adding mint to make this a mint lemonade recipe is completely optional, and we’ll discuss that below.

The most important thing for this lemon mint drink is to use freshly squeezed lemon juice. Please save the bottled stuff for another use (or better yet, just leave it on the grocery store shelf). You want to squeeze your own fresh lemons here.

To yield the 1 cup of fresh lemon juice needed for this homemade lemonade with honey, you’ll likely need 4 to 6 large lemons.

But I always buy a few extra to keep in the fridge, since I squeeze lemon juice on just about all of my meals. You can also zest your lemons before juicing them and make lemon creme brulee!

You’ll also need 1/2 cup of good honey for this honey lemonade. Since there are so few ingredients in this drink, you can really taste the honey.

So if you have a special jar you’ve been saving, now’s the time to break it out (and make my fried goat cheese salad while you’re at it)! More on the honey later, too.

How to make lemonade with honey:

First, you’ll start this lemonade recipe with honey by making something that approximates simple syrup, but instead of white granulated sugar, you’ll be using honey. (My pear muffins also use honey in place of sugar!)

You’ll be stirring together an equal portion of water and honey and then heating it on the stove until the honey dissolves into the water, then using that syrup to make your honey lemonade.

The reason for this (versus simply stirring together the lemon juice, honey and water in a big pitcher) is that the honey will blend into the larger portion of water much easier if it’s dissolved into a thinner syrup first.

If your honey is very runny to begin with, you may be able to get by with skipping making the honey syrup for this lemon mint drink.

But, making the syrup only takes a moment, and really does make it easier to stir everything for this homemade lemonade with honey together in the end, so I really recommend it, if possible.

Add garden herbs to make this a mint lemonade recipe!

This is my first summer really committing to a vegetable and herb garden, and I’m really reaping the benefits. Fresh rosemary is used to make rosemary gin cocktails and grapefruit vodka cocktails with rosemary

I don’t grow my own mint. It’s so invasive, and would quickly overtake everything else in my garden. But I recently discovered that a playground near my house has a seemingly wild, unattended patch of fresh mint growing.

I don’t think anybody minds that I occasionally harvest a few leaves from this GIANT patch of mint for this mint lemonade recipe, right?

If you don’t have access to fresh mint for this lemonade recipe with honey, or don’t like the flavor, simply leave it out. It’s entirely optional, and the honey lemonade is delicious without it.

Sweeten this lemonade recipe with honey to your taste.

This honey lemonade recipe uses 1/2 cup of honey to make four 12 ounce portions of lemonade, with a medium sweetness. I actually prefer my lemonades on the tarter side, so I’ll sometimes use a smidge less honey.

If you like things sweeter, feel free to add a little more honey to this lemonade recipe with honey. The great thing about making lemonade at home is that you can customize it to your own taste.

As far as which variety of honey to use, I generally use an all-purpose clover honey or a mild, citrusy orange blossom honey for this lemon mint drink.

If I’ve recently vacationed in the South and have brought home sweet, buttery, Tupelo honey, I’ll use that for homemade lemonade with honey!

Taste of Home has a nice article on 9 Types of Honey (and Where to Get Them) to help you choose which honey would be best for your tastes to make this recipe.