Have a bottle of orgeat you need to use up? Then you’ve come to the right place! These cocktails all highlight orgeat as a primary ingredient, and range from classic tropical drinks to more unique and unexpected recipes. They’re also super easy to make and only require five ingredients or less, not including garnishes!
Orgeat is an almond-flavored syrup typically made with almonds, sugar, and orange flower water. It’s one of the most multidimensional and delicious cocktail syrups you’ll find, and is best known for adding nuttiness, creaminess, and richness to tropical cocktails. That said, orgeat is super versatile — you can use it in so many cocktails other than tropical cocktails, and this roundup highlights a wide range of different recipes that are so easy anyone can make them.
You can find orgeat at some liquor or cocktail specialty stores if you don’t already have a bottle lying around, but my personal recommendation is to make it at home! I think it tastes better than any store-bought orgeat I’ve tried, so it’s totally worth the extra effort. Here’s the orgeat recipe I use — it only takes 5 minutes to make and always turns out perfectly. The only downside to orgeat is that it’s perishable and a bottle lasts just a little over a month in the fridge. So if you’re looking for delicious ways to use up a batch, these cocktails are a great place to start!
10 Best Orgeat Cocktails
Perfect Mai Tai
We have to start off with the most popular cocktail that uses orgeat: the Mai Tai! This quintessentially tropical cocktail is strong, tart, refreshing, so flavorful, and one of the best drinks for showcasing high-quality rum. In this drink, the orgeat adds the perfect amount of sweetness and richness to balance out the rum and citrus.
Ingredients: dark rum, light rum, orgeat, lime juice, orange curaçao, mint
Army & Navy Cocktail
If you're looking for an easy but unique gin-based drink, try the Army & Navy cocktail! This classic cocktail is tangy, sweet, refreshing, and tart all at once. Plus, it's really easy to make and only requires four ingredients. Essentially, it’s a spin on a gin sour that substitutes orgeat for simple syrup, which makes the final cocktail more rich, nutty, and creamy.
Ingredients: gin, orgeat, lemon juice, Angostura bitters
The Saturn Cocktail
While most tropical cockails use a base of rum, the Saturn uses a gin base instead. This unusual and strikingly delicious cocktail is fruity, rich, tart, and more complex than you'd expect from an easy-drinking tropical cocktail. It uses some of my favorite tropical ingredients including orgeat syrup, falernum, and passion fruit, and it's topped off with a festive lemon peel and cherry garnish that resembles Saturn. Trust me when I say, it's out of this world!
Ingredients: gin, orgeat, passion fruit syrup or liqueur, falernum, lemon juice, lemon peel (garnish), Luxardo cherry (garnish)
Trinidad Sour
There's perhaps no classic cocktail more unorthodox than the Trinidad Sour, and yet it's one of the most popular cocktails in the world! What makes it so different is that it uses a whopping 1.5 ounces of Angostura bitters, which are usually used in very small amounts. Don't let this scare you off though -- it is SO delicious. The large portion of bitters is perfectly balanced out by the sweet orgeat, dry rye whiskey, and tart citrus, resulting in a delightfully spicy, sour, sweet, bitter, and complex cocktail.
Ingredients: Angostura bitters, rye whiskey, orgeat, lemon juice
Port of Spain Cocktail
Here's a cocktail that's similar to the Trinidad Sour, but it has less Angostura bitters and uses mezcal to give it smoky aromas and flavors. It's actually even named after the capital of Trinidad! The flavors in this cocktail could easily overpower one another, but instead they balance each other out like a dream. The orgeat is especially important since it adds a necessary sweetness to the potent bitters and smoky mezcal. It's shockingly easy to drink while also being complex and packed with flavor.
Ingredients: mezcal, orgeat, lime juice, Angostura bitters
The Japanese Cocktail
Despite what the name implies, this cocktail actually has nothing to do with Japan and is said to be named after the first Japanese representatives to visit to the United Nations. Kind of a weird story, but it gave us this incredibly tasty drink so I won't question it! The cocktail first appeared in an 1862 bartender's guide and was originally made with just cognac, orgeat, and aromatic bitters. This recipe is a little sweet for the modern palate though, so most recipes nowadays add citrus to balance out the sweet, creamy orgeat. The end result is a deliciously rich, spirit-forward, and slow-sipping drink.
Ingredients: cognac, orgeat, lime juice, Angostura bitters
Across The Pacific
Here's another tropical cocktail that leverages the wonderful flavor combination of orgeat, citrus, and rum! It uses a split-rum base of an aged rum and an overproof rum, and I highly recommend using Jamaican rums since they'll add "funky" and tropical notes to the drink and play really well with the orgeat's nuttiness and richness. Instead of using bitters as one might expect to round out the drink, the cocktail uses amaro to give it a bitter bite.
Ingredients: aged rum, overproof rum, averna amaro, orgeat, lime juice
Early Start Cocktail
Here's another tasty riff on a gin sour that comes from the Better Luck Tomorrow restaurant in Houston! The base of the cocktail is Aquavit, which is a Scandinavian spirit distilled from grains or potatoes and flavored with herbs and botanicals. It's often referred to as "Scandinavian gin", but actually tastes more like a savory, spicy vodka. This recipe combines Aquavit with citrus, sorrel leaf (a tangy, edible plant), egg white, and orgeat, which adds to the drink's creamy texture and balances out the savory, tart flavors of the other ingredients.
Ingredients: aquavit, orgeat, lime juice, egg white, sorrel leaf
St. Stephen's Sour
It's not often you see rum and cognac paired together in a cocktail, which is what makes the St Stephen's Sour so interesting! This cocktail is sharp and spirit-forward, with the perfect amount of sweetness from the orgeat. It's one of those dangerously drinkable cocktails that you can't help but keep taking sip after sip of even though it's fairly potent.
Ingredients: aged rum, cognac, orgeat, lemon juice
Surf Liner
Finally, we have a fun rye whiskey-based tropical drink that you don't see a lot out in the wild. What makes this cocktail particularly good is the orgeat and pineapple juice. The fruity, tart pineapple and sweet, creamy orgeat work together beautifully, and make for an easy drinking but complex cocktail.
Ingredients: rye whiskey, orgeat, pineapple juice, lemon juice, Peychaud's bitters