We’re wading into the deep waters of the holiday season now. While I like to offer up food ideas for easy party planning, I think we need to address an equally important player: beverages. As a person who loves hosting holiday parties, one of the biggest ways I help myself is by batching cocktails. It saves time, mess, and stress. I’d love for you to have more time for mingling and less time spent mixing, so use this batching tip guide to prepare your holiday cocktails and mocktails in advance.
Batching is a host's best friend
The concept is simple: Batched cocktails are simply large batches of pre-mixed drinks without the ice. Many cocktail recipes are ratios, or they have measurements that are easily multiplied. Which means that, depending on the concoction, you can pour large quantities of the ingredients together and store the mixture in the fridge or freezer for hours or days before you need it. Once it’s party time, your theme drink simply needs its final preparation. Often that step is only as complicated as pouring it over ice.
Batching ahead of time means that he day of the festivities, you get more time to focus on plating charcuterie boards, answering the doorbell, or actually eating your own snacks and talking to people who you like. Be sure to let your guests know where the batch is so they can help themselves. This allows them to be more independent and embrace the “make yourself at home” holiday vibe.
Now that you understand the rewards of batching, here are a few tips to get you on the pathway to success.
Choose the right cocktail
Not every cocktail is going to keep well in the fridge or freezer, so you have to be discerning when doing your research. Cocktails that are high in alcohol work well for batching, like martinis, a negroni, a Long Island iced tea, a sazerac, or a paper plane. These drinks have little juice or non-alcoholic components which means they’ll store well without losing flavor. Keep in mind particularly for a martini, that unless you’re planning on stirring or shaking the cocktail with ice just before serving it “up,” you’ll need to dilute it to account for that missing step. Here's a ratio for properly diluting your bottled martini.
Carefully consider drinks that are largely sparkling wine, soda, or tonic (basically anything bubbly). They’re going to lose all of their festive fizz while sitting in the fridge. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a sparkling topper. To make the most of batching, choose a beverage that has a base you can prepare in advance, a Long Island iced tea for example, and then add the sparkling topper (Coca-Cola here) to each glass as needed. Pour the base into a cup over ice (if using), and top with the appropriate fizzy drink. You’ll need to let guests know about this step and leave the soda, tonic, or champagne available for them, and even if you have to top the drinks for people yourself this is still much faster than mixing each one individually from scratch.
Save the egg-white-dependent, cream-foamed, and muddled drinks and make those to-order. These drinks look and taste best right after being prepared.
How much should you batch?
I very proudly made a large batched cocktail once. Two hours into the festivities it had clean run out. Of course, I had stocked my home bar for folk to rummage through, but I was hoping the clever browned butter-washed whiskey cocktail would be a mainstay throughout the evening. I had grossly underestimated how much to batch.
In times like these, it’s better to do some math. Get a headcount that’s as accurate as possible, and account for four servings per guest for a four hour party. Some guests won’t have the cocktail, some will have fewer than four and a few will have more, but this calculation should land you close to an appropriate batch. Obviously, if you know two friends will only drink wine then you can subtract those servings. If you have 10 people likely to partake, you’ll need 40 servings of the batch.
Use the number of servings to help you calculate the amount you need for each component. This will help you shop for ingredients. If your recipe requires two ounces of gin per serving, you’ll need 80 ounces of gin. Most liquor bottles are in milliliters, so you’ll need to do some quick internet converting from ounces. Since a handle of alcohol is usually 1.75 liters, you’ll need a handle plus a normal 750 milliliter bottle of gin. (No one said batching was cheap. Mocktail anyone?)
How to store it
Store your beautifully batched cocktails in pitchers or large bottles that have secure lids. I like these swing-top glass bottles, they’re small enough to fit comfortably in the fridge or freezer, yet large enough to hold several servings. The small opening makes it easier to pour without making a mess (especially if your friends are getting tipsy), and this particular set comes with a handy collapsible funnel if you don’t already have one. Use your ounce calculation from earlier to help you decide how many bottles you need.
Where to store it
The two best places to store your batched cocktails are the fridge or the freezer, mostly because a cold drink is a better drink, but also because juices, and other ingredients that might oxidize at room temperature (like vermouth), will have a longer life in the fridge. Longer life means you can batch one day or even a week ahead of time. If the cocktail or mocktail you mixed includes freshly squeezed juices as a primary ingredient, consider mixing the batch the day of, or the night before. The juices won’t “go bad,” but they can lose some of their flavor.
Store any batches that are high in alcohol content (about 30% ABV or higher) in the freezer. They won’t freeze in a conventional home freezer, and at most they could become slushy. (Here is an ABV calculator for cocktails, which can be handy for multiple reasons.) Drinks with dairy ingredients, like milk or cream, should be stored in the fridge just in case. If those become slushy, the texture of the dairy ingredient might change after thawing.
When the party starts, simply perform the final steps: Iced cocktails get poured over ice, while drinks served “up” are either already properly diluted or you’ll have to pour the concentrate into a shaker to shake or stir before straining. Maybe all you have to do is top off the batched mix with Champagne. Grab your own, and bask in the warm glow of the holiday season.