What to Mix With Brandy: 10 Mixers, From Classic to Cozy

Brandy suffers from snifter typecasting: the fireplace, the leather chair, the swirling. Meanwhile it spent the entire 19th century as the most-mixed spirit in America; most of the earliest cocktails specified brandy before whiskey muscled in. Grape brandy is fruity, round, and warm, and it mixes beautifully. Your grandfather’s bottle deserves parole.

The classics

Lemon juice plus orange liqueur makes the Sidecar, brandy’s flagship cocktail: 2:1:1, shaken, optional sugar rim. Sharp, elegant, hundred years old.

Cream plus crème de cacao is the Brandy Alexander, dessert’s answer to the Martini and the only drink on this list you could serve instead of pie.

White crème de menthe makes the Stinger, the two-ingredient after-dinner drink of old New York; brandy and mint remains a startlingly good idea.

Sugar and bitters, Wisconsin-style: the Badger State famously makes its Old Fashioneds with brandy instead of whiskey, topped with lemon-lime soda or sour. An entire American region can’t be wrong; the standard recipe converts in one swap.

The easy pours

Ginger ale, 1:3 over ice with a lemon twist, is the best simple brandy highball there is. Cola runs the same play with more caramel. Lemonade suits summer better than you’d expect from a fireside spirit; remember that brandy starts life as grapes. Sweet tea likewise.

Coffee takes brandy happily, with or without cream (café royale, if you’re feeling French about it). Hot water, honey, lemon make a toddy at least as good as the whiskey original; there are five more toddies here that all take brandy. And mulled wine traditionally gets its backbone from a cup of brandy; our mulled recipes assume it. Come December, brandy is also the correct spirit for eggnog, but that’s a seasonal treaty rather than a mixer.

Cognac and Armagnac are brandies too, of course; if your bottle says Hennessy, we wrote that one up separately. Fruit brandies (apple, cherry, apricot) run sweeter and slot into the same mixers with the dial turned down.

Four more that earn a spot

Hot spiced cider. A shot of brandy in a mug of hot cider is the Brandy Strudel, about 1:4, with a cinnamon stick and a lemon wedge. Scale it up and it becomes Mulled Cider: a quart of cider, 3 ounces of brandy, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, orange rounds, 15 minutes at a simmer. The better bowl for a crowd that includes anyone who won’t drink red.

Whole milk, sugar, nutmeg. New Orleans has poured Brandy Milk Punch at brunch since at least the 1800s: 2 ounces brandy, 6 ounces milk, a teaspoon of sugar, shaken hard, nutmeg on top. Eggnog without the eggs, and defensible at eleven in the morning.

Sweet vermouth. The Brandy Manhattan is 2 ounces brandy to half an ounce of sweet vermouth with Angostura and a cherry, stirred. Add a teaspoon of sugar and shake it instead and you have the Metropolitan, an 1890s recipe that beat the vodka-cranberry drink of the same name by a century.

Bénédictine. The B&B is half an ounce of each, brandy floated on the herbal liqueur in a cordial glass, no ice, no stirring. Bénédictine’s honey and saffron were practically designed for brandy; the distillery eventually bottled the two together and sold it under the same name.

Ratios at a glance

If the bottle has been open since a previous decade, it is almost certainly fine; brandy at 40 percent loses a little aroma over the years and a highball will never show it.

Skip these

Tonic fights the grape, energy drinks are a category error, and heavy tropical juices (pineapple, mango) muddy what makes brandy brandy. Add lime to the list; lemon suits brandy and lime does not, which is why the Sidecar calls for lemon. Diet sodas turn brandy metallic. And “blackberry brandy” from the bottom shelf is a sweetened liqueur rather than brandy, so nothing on this page applies to it. It’s an autumn-and-winter spirit at heart; mix it like one.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the best mixer for brandy?

Ginger ale for an easy highball, fresh lemon (with orange liqueur) for the classic Sidecar. Coffee, apple cider, and hot toddies cover the warm end.

Is brandy good with Coke?

Yes; brandy and cola is standard in much of the world, 1:3 over ice. It’s rounder and fruitier than whiskey-cola.

Is brandy good with ginger ale?

It is the best simple brandy highball there is: 1 part brandy to 3 parts ginger ale over ice with a lemon twist. Ginger beer works too and gives a spicier drink.

What is a brandy Old Fashioned?

Wisconsin’s state cocktail, more or less: an Old Fashioned made with brandy instead of whiskey, muddled sugar and bitters, usually topped with lemon-lime soda (“sweet”) or sour mix (“sour”).

What do you mix with brandy for a warm drink?

Hot apple cider at 1:4 makes a Brandy Strudel, hot water with honey and lemon makes a toddy, and a cup of brandy is the traditional backbone of mulled wine. Coffee with a shot of brandy is a cafe royale.

Can you mix brandy with milk?

Yes. Brandy Milk Punch is 2 ounces of brandy shaken with 6 ounces of whole milk and a teaspoon of sugar, finished with grated nutmeg. It is a New Orleans brunch standard.

What’s the difference between brandy and cognac for mixing?

Cognac is brandy from one French region; any brandy recipe accepts it. For mixing with soda or juice, an honest mid-shelf brandy performs nearly as well as cognac at a third of the price.

All our brandy recipes are filed under the brandy ingredient page. Better yet, let Cocktail Builder cross-check your shelf and report what’s makeable tonight. Snifter optional.

Last modified on September 3, 2026