Serving up large quantities of quality cocktails for your party
Using large drink carafes is a perfect way to keep your guests’ thirst quenched. With just a little bit of prep, it saves from someone having to play bartender all night or people making a mess out of a table filled with liquor and mixers. And as you know, as long as the drinks are flowing, your guests are happy and ready to party. It’s always difficult to estimate how much liquor to purchase and/or mixers to make drinks for your party, so I’ve broken it down into a simple grocery list and recipe for two awesome drinks! These amounts are for a party with roughly 30-40 guests with beer options to drink as well. Any more than 40 and you should add a third carafe.
What you’ll need:
- 2 3-gallon carafes with spouts for your concoctions. I found mine on Amazon. (These even have prime shipping!)
- 1.75 liters of gin of your choice–I use Bombay Saphire
- 1.75 liters of vodka of your choice–I use Kettle One
- 4 bottles of Trader Joe’s mango lemonade (1.89 liter bottles)
- 8 1-liter bottles of club soda (6.5 for the gin drink, 1.5 for the vodka drink)
- 1 medium box of blueberries (for the vodka drink)
- Handful of basil (for the gin drink)
- 10 lemons (for the gin drink)
- 1 bottle of Ginger People’s ginger syrup–if you can’t find this a bottle of honey works great (just the average “honey bear” bottle size)
This first drink is the same recipe as a past post, but on a much larger scale. Cut 8 lemons in half and 2 lemons in quarters. Squeeze the 8 halves into the carafe over a strainer to collect the seeds.
The other two lemons should be quartered and added to your fruit bin, on top of your handful of basil. Muddle the fruit and basil to get the basil flavor activated in the drink.
Add 3/4 of the 1.75 liter bottle of gin along with 5 1-liter bottles of soda water. I don’t use all the ingredients up front because I normally do a little refresh of the drinks halfway through the night.
Add the ginger syrup or honey to the carafe. Make sure you stir!
Prep your medium box of blueberries for the vodka drink. Add 3 1.89-liter bottle of Trader Joe’s mango lemonade to the carafe. The fourth bottle should be saved to refresh over the course of the night.
Again, I only use 3/4 of the 1.75-liter bottle initially. As the night goes on, I’ll normally add the rest with the extra bottle of mango lemonade.
Add one liter of club soda for a little bubbly:) Keep an extra bottle of club soda to refresh later in the night.
These carafes come with these awesome ice cube tubes to keep the drinks cooler. I highly suggest you use them! Especially if your drinks are sitting outside. Never add ice directly to the drink mixture in the carafe, it will water it down.
After putting the blueberries in the fruit bin, muddle them as well to activate the flavor. These fruit bins are genius! I love adding muddled fresh fruit to drinks, but hate having particles of fruit floating around and getting stuck in your straw. This brings the fresh fruit flavor and keeps the floating fruit pieces to a minimum:)
Cap off the drinks and you’re ready to go!
