A follow-up to Crowdsourcing Cocktails: Iced Tea
Last week I put a question to the crowd: what cocktails could I make with my leftover iced tea? A few of you replied with excellent suggestions, which I took to my kitchen along with my barware.
Fellow bloggers G-Lo (It’s Just the Booze Dancing) and Susannah (What Tastes Good) both provided recommendations. However, I didn’t follow their suggestions to the letter, but rather tweaked them slightly based on my personal tastes and what I had on hand.
First, G-Lo recommended the following:
How about one part homemade Limoncello, of which I have plenty, and three parts Sun Tea, shaken and poured over ice in a tall glass and then topped with a splash of San Pellegrino Blood Orange Soda? Garnish it with a wedge of lemon and BOOM! you’re done.
Thankfully, I still had some homemade limoncello (a little less than G-Lo, I believe) and was able to easily find San Pellegrino Aranciata Rossa (Blood Orange) at the neighborhood grocery store. (As an aside, I prefer Orangina to San Pellegrino, but that’s neither here nor there in this case.) After mixing things up, I was surprised at how nicely it tasted. Each ingredient was equally recognizable and the juice didn’t over-sweeten the drink and I thought it would.
I made a slight modification for my second helping, however: instead of shaking the three together, I stirred them in my glass over ice. Stirring better separated the flavors a bit more and didn’t chill the drink as much, which I more preferred. More importantly, I was able to use two homemade products – tea and limoncello – killing two birds with one cocktail, as it were.
The second recipe was sent by Susannah, who suggested:
Sweet iced tea (infused with fresh mint if you can) and bourbon. That’s pretty much the best I can do once the temperature gets above 90…
Here I must admit: I cut corners. As the recipe called for sweet tea, I used my sun tea (not infused with mint) with a half tablespoon or so of sugar, along with the bourbon, in two-to-one proportions (two parts tea, one part bourbon). This too wasn’t bad and definitely provided a boozier kick than G-Lo’s recipe. Yet I preferred the former limoncello-based drink to the latter – perhaps it’s my penchant for malt-based whisky (rather than corn-based bourbon), or it could have been my preference for unsweetened tea over sweetened.
Nevertheless, both cocktails used the surplus tea as I had intended and taught me a couple of new cocktails in the process, which was why I had originally asked the question. I spent a few moments in the kitchen with my cocktail shaker, which these days, is an exceedingly rare occurrence.
Thanks to you both for sharing the information, very much appreciated!
The Hip Flask 