99 Bananas Drinks: Easy Mixes, Frozen Blends and Shots for the 99-Proof Schnapps

Ninety-nine proof. The number is right there on the label, and it explains most of what this bottle does at a party. 99 Bananas is a banana schnapps at 49.5% alcohol, a little stronger than most vodka. It tastes like the yellow ones from a box of Runts, and it goes down far easier than anything at that strength should.

We have watched it travel from dorm-room freezers to beach rentals and twenty-year reunions, bought a little sheepishly by people who swore they were done with it. No judgment here. The bottle is fun as long as you know what it likes to be mixed with, and how much less of it to pour than you’d guess.

How it differs from crème de banane

Our banana liqueur cocktails roundup covers the whole category, and plenty of people searching for 99 Bananas land there first. The two styles of bottle don’t swap cleanly, though.

Crème de banane is the old French style. It’s golden, heavy with sugar, and tastes of ripe, almost browned banana with a vanilla edge. Most bottles sit at roughly half the strength of 99 Bananas, and a half ounce is there to sweeten a tiki drink as much as to flavor it.

99 Bananas is clear, much drier, and twice as hot. Its banana is bright and candied, cheerful rather than ripe. Put it into a crème de banane recipe and the drink comes out thinner and boozier, so add a little syrup or extra juice. Go the other way and the drink turns sticky and soft. We keep both, and we don’t treat them as the same bottle.

The juice mixes

Most 99 Bananas drinks are two or three ingredients over ice, with fruit juice doing the softening. Orange and pineapple suit it best, since both already lean tropical.

Screaming Banana: 1½ oz of schnapps and 3 oz of pineapple juice, topped up with orange juice. Our first pour at any party.
Fuzzy Banana: two parts orange juice to one part each of peach schnapps and 99 Bananas. A Fuzzy Navel that went on vacation.
Strawberry Banana: equal parts schnapps and cranberry juice. Pink and tart, and we’d stretch it with more cranberry.
Happy Monkey: vodka, Sprite and 99 Bananas in matching pours, fizzy and sneaky.

Then there’s the Banana Hammock #2, which calls for six ounces of schnapps to six of orange juice. We adore the name. That ratio puts about four shots in one glass, so we halve the schnapps and end up with something sunny and sippable.

For a crowd, the Hawaiian Hammer scales nicely: 99 Bananas, coconut rum and 151-proof rum, a couple of dashes of grenadine, then six ounces each of orange and pineapple juice. It reads like a mixtape from 2004. Skip the 151 and it’s still plenty strong. If you’re filling a whole cooler with mismatched bottles, our jungle juice recipe shows how to keep that sort of thing drinkable, and a splash of banana fits right in.

Into the blender

Banana and crushed ice are old friends. Cold mutes both sugar and alcohol, which is why a frozen drink can carry a heavy pour of schnapps without tasting harsh.

The Strawberry-Banana Daiquiri blends five ounces of 99 Bananas with seven of strawberry daiquiri mix and a cup and a half of ice. That fills two big glasses, pink and thick enough to need a straw. Toss in the spotty banana from the fruit bowl; it thickens the slush and pulls the candy flavor toward real fruit.

The Cina Polada takes piña colada mix with an ounce each of 99 Bananas and 151 rum. We make it with ordinary white rum, and nobody has noticed except the next morning, kindly.

Coffee, cream and chocolate

This part of the database caught us off guard. Banana with coffee liqueur tastes like banana bread next to a mug of coffee, and a little cream turns it into dessert.

The Drunken Monkey is an ounce of 99 Bananas with half an ounce each of Baileys and Kahlúa, shaken until the tin frosts. Bananas and Cream uses the same trio in equal half ounces as a shooter. Gorilla Milk #2 brings in amaretto and tops the glass with milk, and we like it best over ice on a dark winter evening.

When dinner calls for something sweet in a stemmed glass, the Chocolate Banana Martini shakes two parts Ketel One with one part each of white crème de cacao and 99 Bananas. The Hufflepuff goes softer, with vanilla vodka and cream at two ounces apiece alongside the schnapps. Serve it instead of cake and nobody will ask where the cake went.

We keep coming back to Banana Split #3, even though it looked silly on paper: 99 Bananas and Godiva chocolate liqueur poured over ice with four ounces of cream soda. The vanilla in the soda ties the other two together, and it fizzes on the way down like an old drugstore float.

Party shots

Straight, a shot of 99 Bananas is a real shot, and it lands like one. Mixed shooters are friendlier.

The Ballistic Banana pairs it with vodka and a splash of grenadine. Dirty Monkey #2 is half an ounce each of coconut rum and 99 Bananas, a beach-towel combination if ever there was one. The Carmel Nana matches it with DeKuyper ButterShots for banana caramel, exactly as advertised.

Not sure what else that bottle can do? Tell Cocktail Builder what’s already in your cabinet, and it splits the banana drinks you can pour tonight from the ones that need a store run.

Keeping a bottle around

We stash ours in the freezer the day before a party. At that strength it won’t freeze, and ice-cold schnapps tastes less like candy and more like fruit. All that alcohol keeps an open bottle sound for a long while, though the banana does lose some of its brightness after a year or so. Use a jigger when you pour. Free-pouring a 99-proof liqueur because it tastes like dessert is how a quiet evening becomes the story everyone tells next summer.

Last modified on October 19, 2026