mellonbread's Favorite Drinks to Make at Home - Part 1

Mixing drinks is not difficult. Getting all the ingredients and utensils together can be an expensive chore. But once you have them, making the drinks is rarely more difficult than squeezing, stirring, shaking and pouring.

 

These are my favorite drinks - mostly small variations on established recipes. I'm going to list how I make them, which isn't always going to be the proper recipe. Sometimes I substitute things. I'll list the overall level of availability so you can gauge how difficult it might be for you to find the ingredients.

ACID SPIT 

Availability: Easy. If your grocery store has liquor you can pick up everything you need in one trip.

 

This is the first real cocktail I ever made, a simple gin and tonic variation. It's sweet, sour, boozy, and you can customize as you drink it until it's exactly the way you like it.

• 2 oz of a gin with a strong flavor. Delicate, artisinal gins will get lost against the background. Something cheap or mid shelf is ideal.
• Juice of half a lemon
• Juice of half a lime
• Cracked ice
• Tonic water to taste (I use Fever Tree. I know the pros prefer Q, but I find the sweetness of the tree offsets the harshness of the gin and sourness of the citrus perfectly)

Combine in a glass and take a sip. If it's too sweet, add more citrus. If it's too sour, add more tonic. If you can't taste the gin, add more gin. 

JUNGLE BIRD

Availability: Moderate. I've never found orgeat in the grocery store, and it's a pain to make yourself. Any liquor store should have it.

I don't think this is an official IBA cocktail, but you can find it on recipe sites. It's one of my favorite tiki drinks, although I've never actually made it with the proper ingredients. You're supposed to use "blackstrap" rum and syrup, neither of which I have.

• 1.5 ounces Jamaican rum. The stores here have Appleton, which is good. If you can't find that, Meyer's will do the job. Don't write it off just because it comes in a plastic bottle.
  
• .75 ounce Campari 
• 1 1/2 ounces pineapple juice 
• .5 ounce lime juice, freshly squeezed 
• .5 ounce orgeat syrup

Shake all that with ice, strain it into a glass, garnish with a pineapple wedge. It's sweet, funky, bitter and complex.

ROYAL HAWAIIAN

Availability: Moderate. I've never found orgeat in the grocery store, and it's a pain to make yourself. Any liquor store should have it.

 

This is another one that doesn't show up on wikipedia, but you can find all over the internet. I use less sweetener than most recipes, because I find the pineapple juice does a fine job without drowning the whole thing in orgeat.

• 1.5 oz Gin
• .5 oz orgeat syrup
• 1 oz pineapple juice (could go 1.5 or 2)
• .5 oz lemon juice (could go as high as 1)

Shake with ice, strain into glass, garnish with pineapple chunk. One of a proud few tiki drinks that uses gin as a base.

 

GIN RICKY

The only picture I had of this one was with food

Availability: Easy. If your grocery store has liquor you can pick up everything you need in one trip.

Let's take a step away from tiki drinks for a second, with a three ingredient drink that's surprisingly refreshing without being sweet at all.

• 2 oz gin - fancy or rotgut as you please
• Juice of half a lime - or a full lime if you've got those tiny little ones
• Ice, cracked or cubed
• Carbonated water to taste. I like Topo Chico but realistically you can use anything and I doubt there will be a taste difference

Combine in the glass, and toss the squeezed lime rind in there for good measure. Just make sure it doesn't form a plug that stops the "halves" of the drink from interacting. 

 

CORPSE REVIVER NUMBER TWO

Availability: Tricky. The Cocchi Americano is the wildcard here. Liquor megastores will have it in the aperitif or vermouth section. Anything below that may have it. Absinthe isn't hard to find at liquor stores, but can be pricey.

 

This one is a classic for a reason. Unfortunately it also uses a couple esoteric ingredients that can't be substituted. Bear with me here.

• Equal parts of
• Lemon juice
• Orange liqueur (you're supposed to use Cointreau, but this one you can get away with subbing triple sec)
• Gin
• Either Cocchi Americano or Kina L'aero D'or (both attempts to recreate the now defunct Kina Lilet. In effect, a bartending retroclone. The secret ingredient that makes the Corpse Reviver work)
• A few drops of absinthe (or Pernod, or similar)

Combine the lemon juice, orange stuff, gin and cocchi in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a glass. Toss in a few drops of absinthe and express an orange peel over it.

 

TEQUILA CON FRUTA

Availability: Easy. If your grocery store has liquor you can pick up everything you need in one trip.

 

A bright, uplifting drink that's easy to make. I'm sure someone has thought of this before, but here goes.

• 2 oz of your favorite tequila. I use the Cazadores anejo, but just pick one you like
• Juice of half a grapefruit
• Juice of half a lemon
• Juice of half a lime
• Juice of half an orange
• Salt

Salt the rim of your glass. I learned on the How to Drink show that the best way to do this is putting your salt on a plate, rubbing a citrus fruit around the rim of the glass, then gently pressing the outside edge of the glass down into the salt. Lift up, rotate and press down again until you've got the whole circumference covered. Once that's taken care of, just shake the tequila and fruit juice with ice, and strain into the glass.

More to come when I have enough to fill another post.