Convert Any co*cktail Recipe to Big Batch (2024)

When you’re entertaining guests, you can save yourself time by pre-mixing a big batch of co*cktails in a pitcher or beverage dispenser. Everyone gets to serve themselves while you chat and make sure everything else is running smoothly.

And this is really simple to do, even when the drink you want to make doesn’t come with a big batch recipe. Or when the big batch recipes you’ve found are in imperial measurements and you need metric, or the other way around. All you need to do is follow the tips below.

Premixing a pitcher of co*cktails

You can pre-mix a pitcher of co*cktails up to a week before your party, as long as you don’t add ice until you’re ready to serve. If you’re using fresh fruit juice, try to mix it within 24 hours before the party, or no more than 48. It won’t go bad if you do it sooner, but it could possibly lose a little bit of flavor.

We’ve got two options for how to convert co*cktail recipe measurements to big batch, and you can use whichever one seems easier to you. Whichever one you use, there are a couple of things to remember:

1. Leave out ice until you’re ready to serve, or it’ll dilute the mix. You can even set out an ice bucket and scoop for guests to serve themselves.
2. Leave out carbonated ingredients like 7-up, or they’ll go flat. Unless you’re mixing it less than an hour or two before the party. Again, you can leave those ingredients on a table for guests to serve themselves.
3. Once you’ve premixed your pitcher, cover it with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator.

Know how many drinks you’ll need

If your guests are friends and you have an idea how much they drink, that’s simple. Just count up the number of drinks you expect each person to have, and add them all together.

If you’re not sure, a good rule of thumb is to figure each guest will drink the equivalent of four standard drinks. Since some probably won’t drink this much, this tends to leave you with a little extra, which is always better than not having enough.

Figuring the drink volume

Now that you know how many drinks, you need to figure out what volume they’re going to take up in a pitcher. Look at your chosen drink recipe, and multiply each ingredient by the number of drinks you expect to be making.

So if you’re making a big batch of 16 drinks, and your recipe calls for 1 ounce of orange juice and 1.5 ounces of a fruit juice, you’ll need 16 ounces of vodka and 24 (16 x 1.5) ounces of the fruit juice. That means you’ll need a pitcher that holds at least 65 ounces of liquid.

If your drink is measured in “parts”, as in “1 part vodka, 2 parts juice”, your work just got much simpler. You can actually skip to the next step, make sure you’ve got a pitcher big enough to hold the volume you’re making, and mix it right there in the pitcher.

Choosing a pitcher or pitchers

Now that you know the volume of the drinks you need to make in advance, you can determine how large a pitcher (or pitchers) you need to premix. If you know how many ounces your pitcher or beverage server holds, then you just need to make sure you’ve got enough containers to hold the combined total of those drinks (see above).

If you have a pitcher and don’t know how much it holds, here’s a quick and dirty way to figure it out: get a measuring cup, fill it with water, and pour it in the pitcher. Keep doing this until the pitcher is full, marking down each cup as you pour it. Now multiply what your measuring cup holds by the number of times you were able to pour water into the pitcher.

So if your measuring cup holds 4 cups (which the measuring cup tells you is 32 ounces), and it took 2 measuring cups to fill your pitcher, then your pitcher holds 8 cups, which is 64 ounces. If you’re making 16 four ounce co*cktails, that’s perfect. If you’re making more, you’ll need another pitcher or a bigger one.

And if you’re doing all this in imperial, your measuring cup will work just as well. Just multiply how many milliliters or liters your measuring cup holds and multiply it by how many times it can fill your pitcher.

Workaround: Instead of trying to calculate the pitchers, you can totally use a great big container like a (very clean) bucket and mix your big batch co*cktail in it. Then you pour the mixture into a pitcher, and then another pitcher if needed, and so on.

If all this sounds like too much math, don’t worry – we’ve got another option for you!

The Almost No Math Method

There is a way to do this without a lot of math. And for some drinks, it might be much easier than trying to convert the numbers. You ready? Here goes:

Make one of the co*cktails. Pour it into a pitcher. Make another one. Pour it into the pitcher. And so on until you’ve got the amount of drinks you will need for each guest.

It really can be that simple. And this is especially useful if you really feel the drink needs to be, for example, shaken with ice. You just do that each time before pouring it into the pitcher, and you’re all set.

Serving Your Premixed co*cktails

Once your guests arrive, serving is quick and easy. If your drink calls for nothing but the premix, all you need to do is pour or let guests serve themselves. If it requires stirring or shaking or adding carbonated ingredients, you can do that one drink at a time. One last suggestion:

Serve in chilled glasses

If your co*cktail doesn’t need to be served on the rocks, the combination of a refrigerated premix and the chilled glasses will keep drinks cooler longer – without any ice to dilute them.

If a guest takes a long time with one drink and you suspect it’s become room temperature, bring the guest another chilled glass to pour the remainder into, then fill that glass with more of the premix. This is something I’ve seen at restaurant bars and it makes for very impressive hosting.

There are several ways to keep glasses chilled.

• Put them in the fridge for 3-4 hours. This is great for the first round of drinks, but unless you have lots of glasses and room in the fridge for all of them, you won’t be able to chill re-used glasses in time. So for the rest of the night…
• Wash your guest’s used glasses quickly, then put them in an ice bucket. This chills them very well within 15-30 minutes, so they’ll be ready for the next round of refills.
• Quick & dirty backup plan: fill a room temperature glass with crushed ice and swirl it around until it feels very cool. Dump the ice out and pour the drink.

Enjoy!