3 Simple Summer Cocktails

When you’re hosting a party, a fine balancing act is required in order to be able to enjoy yourself while simultaneously seeing to the needs of all of your guests. One option to remedy this situation is to hire a professional bartender to work the event. If you don’t quite have a budget for that, you could do the next best thing and rent a portable bar for your backyard, fully stocked with all the ingredients and tools you need to make delicious beverages for your guests.

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For those guests at your party who simply want to drink beer and wine, this is a simple enough solution. You simply pour the wine or crack a beer and hand it to them, no problem. However, if you want to get a little fancier and mix up some cocktails, you may run into a logistical problem. You see, if you spend all day mixing individual cocktails for whoever wants one, you risk reducing mingle time to virtually nothing.

A trend that’s been popular recently – possibly as a reaction to overly fussy bartending – is mixing a big batch of boozy cocktails in a cold metal pitcher and doling it out to several people at once. That way, rather than serving several different drinks to a multitude of party goers, you make it easier on yourself by offering just two or three options. In some circles this is called mixing cocktails ‘sling style’, presumably because it gives you the ability to sling drinks more easily.

Below is a list of three drinks that are easy and delicious to serve sling style:

Gin Sling —

The gin sling consists of a base of cherry infused gin (Dillon’s cherry gin is easy enough to find), and triple sec, topped up with soda water and lime juice, and finished off with a healthy splash of Angostura Bitters. The liquor in this particular drink is on the sweet side, so you don’t need to add simple syrup, plus the bitters help to cut the sweetness and round out the flavour. The gin sling goes down smooth and on a hot day you may need to remind yourself how boozy they really are.

Paloma –

Somewhat similar to the classic margarita, the Paloma makes for a longer drink that your guests can spend a little more time enjoying. The Paloma uses tequila as it’s base, topped up with grapefruit soda (you can find Ting at your local No Frills), soda water and lots of lime juice, plus a dash of salt. Like its cousin the gin sling, these go down dangerously quickly.

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#73 —

This drink is a take on the Australian drink know simply as “lemon-lime bitters”, but with less sweetness since it doesn’t incorporate overly sugared Sprite or store-bought lemonade. It takes vodka as it’s base, topped up with soda water, lime cordial, Angostura Bitters and a healthy squirt of lemon juice. This is a good option for someone who wants a slightly less sweet drink, and you can customize how much sugar goes into it, since it’s dependent on the lime cordial.

Rather than spending all night shaking up drinks in a mixer and neglecting your guests, mix up some cocktails in a cold metal pitcher and sling and mingle the night away!