We really enjoy having an evening cocktail in our house. There was once a time where this was a relaxing ritual – flipping through recipe books or blogs, selecting a drink that fit the day’s mood, mixing it up in elegant barware, and maybe snapping a photo or two before sitting down and leisurely sipping on it.
Then we had a kid. And while this has undeniably made our lives happier in innumerable ways, his ascension to toddler age has definitely put a bit of a damper on cocktail hour. Diverting his attention long enough for me to sneak away and make drinks is a challenge in itself, and if I manage, it becomes a race against time.
So early on in the pandemic, when daycare was closed and the general state of the world made drinking in the evenings a necessity, I started bottling cocktails. This is an incredibly easy thing to do, and if you choose the right sort of drink, it will taste as good out of a bottle as it did when you first mixed it up. Bottled cocktails are great for a quick drink, but they also make fantastic gifts. So with the holidays coming up, I thought I’d do a quick tutorial.
The best cocktails to bottle are spirit-forward cocktails without juices. All juices can eventually go bad, and their flavors can also change over time as bitter compounds begin to form. But high-ABV mixtures of spirits can stay good for weeks – even indefinitely, if there is no syrup or vermouth. It’s a good idea to keep them in the fridge to slow oxidation and help preserve the more perishable ingredients in the mix. The flavors may change over time, but you may find you enjoy the difference – “bottle-aging” of cocktails is a technique for marrying and mellowing the flavors in a drink. Great cocktails to bottle include the Negroni, Manhattan, Old Fashioned, and Martini, along with their many variations.
When bottling cocktails, you can prepare them just as you would if you were going to drink them immediately by stirring them with ice. But this is a little impractical, especially if you’re making a larger volume. Since you won’t be drinking the cocktail right away and will be storing it in the fridge, you can just add water to get the appropriate dilution. One way to make sure the amount of water is to your taste is to make one cocktail as a test and measure it before and after stirring. I find that adding 1/2 ounce of water per 3 ounce cocktail is perfect.
If you’re making a large batch of drinks, multiply each ingredient by the number of cocktails you plan to make. Say you want to make a bottle of Negronis. A Negroni is a 3 ounce cocktail, so your batched version will be 3.5 ounces when you add that 1/2 ounce of water to dilute it. If you’ve got a 32-ounce bottle, that’s space for 9 cocktails. Mix 9 ounces of gin, 9 ounces of vermouth, 9 ounces of Campari, and 4.5 ounces of water together and fill the bottle. And you’re done! Nine Negronis will be waiting for you in the fridge. When you want one, pour it right over ice and garnish.
The drink that I’ve bottled the most at home is the Boston Brahmin. It’s a recipe that I came up with after trying a Banana Boulevardier that a friend posted on Instagram. It is a ridiculously delicious cocktail, like a Negroni that took a vacation to the Caribbean. My husband requests it more often than anything else. When I have a bottle of it in the fridge, pouring one out for him is easy – even with a toddler underfoot.
Boston Brahmin
1 oz. aged rum
1 oz. sweet vermouth
3/4 oz. Campari
1/4 oz. Banane du Bresil
Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled. Strain into a rocks glass over one large ice cube. No garnish needed, but an orange twist or dried orange slice would not go amiss.