Creme de Menthe Cocktails: Grasshoppers, Stingers and the Green Bottle

Second week of December. The good glasses are out, and somebody at the table asks for “that green minty thing” their grandmother used to make. Every household we know has a version of this moment, and it explains why a bottle of creme de menthe lives at the back of so many cupboards.

That bottle deserves better than one appearance a year. Our database has 120 recipes calling for the green one and 115 for the white, and plenty of them we’d happily pour in April.

Green or white

We get this question most, and the answer is short: they taste the same. Both are a sweet mint liqueur flavored with peppermint, usually somewhere between 20 and 25 percent alcohol. The green one is simply colored. The white (actually clear) is left alone.

So choose by looking at the drink. A Grasshopper should be pale jade, so it takes green. A Stinger should look like a glass of cognac, so it takes white. When a recipe just says “creme de menthe,” use whichever you have, and nobody will know. Buying only one? We’d buy white, since it disappears into more drinks, and a single drop of food coloring can turn it green in an emergency.

The Grasshopper

The drink everyone means. Our Grasshopper uses green creme de menthe, white creme de cacao, vanilla ice cream and a sprig of mint. Blend until it’s thick enough to hold a straw upright. Tujague’s in New Orleans claims to have invented it, and it has been a holiday fixture ever since. Ice cream rather than cream gives it that milkshake body, and that body is what people remember when they ask for it. Curious about the chocolate half of the pairing? Our creme de cacao guide has a dozen more places to use that bottle.

A quicker, no-blender cousin is the Peppermint Pattie: white creme de menthe and white creme de cacao, shaken hard and served very cold.

The Stinger family

Find the Grasshopper too sweet? The Stinger answers that. Cognac and white creme de menthe, stirred or shaken, served up or over crushed ice. It dates from before Prohibition, an after-dinner drink for people who dressed for dinner. Mint cools the brandy’s heat without hiding it, and for something almost all spirit, it goes down remarkably easily.

Once you have the frame, the base can move. The Brandy Stinger is the everyday version with a less expensive brandy, while the Vodka Stinger tastes cleaner and lets the mint lead. An almond-liqueur version turns the whole thing into dessert. The Diana Cocktail returns to brandy and white creme de menthe. Traditionally the brandy gets floated over the mint on crushed ice, so the drink changes as you sip.

After Eight and friends

The thin chocolate mint that comes out with the coffee has inspired a small shelf of drinks. The After Eight combines creme de menthe, Baileys and Tia Maria, usually layered as a shot, and we have a whole piece on the After Eight cocktail and how to get the layers to sit. For a gentler route, the Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookie puts the same liqueur into hot chocolate, and we make it when people come in from the cold.

For a festive drink with a bit of mischief, The Drunken Elf pairs green creme de menthe with cream, cinnamon schnapps and cinnamon candies.

For St. Patrick’s Day

Green creme de menthe earns a second season in March. The Shamrock mixes Irish whiskey, dry vermouth and a little green creme de menthe, garnished with an olive, and it tastes much drier and more grown-up than its color suggests. Leprechaun’s Libation is simply Irish whiskey with a splash of green creme de menthe. Put Irish Mist in place of the whiskey and it turns softer and honeyed.

The easy ones

Some evenings we don’t want a project. A Mint Highball tops green creme de menthe with ginger ale over plenty of ice, and it’s surprisingly refreshing on a warm afternoon. Mint and ginger both read as cool, so the drink tastes lighter than it is. Like the idea of mint in a tall glass but want it sharper and less sweet? Our peppermint schnapps drinks go in that direction, since schnapps carries less sugar.

Not sure what else in the cabinet will pair with it? Drop your bottles into CocktailBuilder and it will sort out which of these you can make tonight.

Buying and keeping it

We keep a small bottle rather than a large one. Creme de menthe is sweet enough and strong enough that it won’t spoil. The peppermint aroma does fade over a couple of years, though, and the green versions can dull in color if the bottle sits in sunlight. Store it in a cupboard, cap it tightly, and pick the brand with the brightest, cleanest mint smell you can find. In drinks this simple, a flat liqueur has nowhere to hide.

Last modified on September 27, 2026