If you’re planning to celebrate Fourth of July this week and you haven’t stocked up yet, you still have one more day to lay in some essentials. And whether you’re hosting friends and family at your place and want to put on a spread for them, or you’re heading out to someone else’s party and you want to bring along a contribution, there are plenty of drinks options which are unfussy to make but delicious to drink.
If you’re hosting more than a small handful of people and your guests like to drink, then you’ll want to look into batch cocktails. The idea is that, rather than mixing each drink individually to order, you make up a large quantity of a single cocktail beforehand then have it ready for whenever your guests want it.
You can batch prepare many kinds of drink, but it works best with ingredients like spirits and sodas which won’t go bad or separate in the fridge. Stay away from anything like an espresso martini, for example, as the egg white foam can dissolve or go bad.
If your guests are fans of bitter classics they might enjoy a negroni, which is dead easy to batch as it is made of equal parts. A mojito is another summer favorite that’s easy to batch, though I’d leave out the soda water as it will go flat. Just mix up the rest of the ingredients, then add soda water as you serve. If you fancy something with a taste of Britain for your very American celebration, then a bottle of Pimms makes a delicious, fruity cocktail which is widely adored by people of all ages. And any kind of punch is an obvious yes.
When making batch cocktails, one thing to watch is the balance. Some ingredients carry a real punch, such as bitters and tinctures, so you might not want to scale these up linearly. You might also consider adding more water (either by using soda water or by shaking very well with ice) as straight cocktails can be pretty high in alcohol.
Keep your batch cocktail in the fridge for storage, then you can serve it from a punch bowl or even from a keg or barrel for your celebrations.
