The Ingredient Adjustment You Shouldn't Forget To Make When Batch Making Blended Cocktails

The only thing worse than not being able to get your hands on a frozen, blended cocktail on a scorching hot day is drinking a melted, watered-down cocktail. We'd rather have a cocktail neat, thank you very much. It seems like a losing battle as soon as a frozen cocktail is poured from the blender — the moment it's exposed to the sun or heat, the frosty texture quickly falls apart. There's a solution to make sure your drinks stay strong: The key is nailing the ratios.

Sure, you can invest in well-insulated cocktail tumblers or stick to sipping in the shade, but a few recipe adjustments help ensure the cocktail is still tasty, even when it starts melting. The idea is to assume the drink begins melting sooner rather than later. Therefore, adding more sugar and citrus juice to the recipe helps you prepare for the inevitable. Upping the sugar content and bold flavor of citrus juice, one of the most popular frozen cocktail ingredients, serves another purpose.

Our sense of taste is slightly distorted with frozen drinks. This is particularly true for sweet and bitter flavors, making for a flat tasting cocktail if we cannot detect these notes. It may be tempting to add extra ice to the frozen cocktail to keep it slushy-like for longer; but, as soon as it starts to melt, the diluting effect becomes much worse. The same is true for alcohol; if you add more of it so the drink still tastes strong when melted, know that a higher alcohol content causes frozen drinks to melt faster.

Frozen cocktails require balance like any cocktail recipe, even if it's necessary to add a bit more of certain ingredients. However, too much added sugar, concentrated juices, and syrups can make a frozen cocktail taste more like a cheap mocktail. While a frozen margarita absolutely needs lime, too much is going to make it the only flavor you taste. When these ingredients are added with correct ratios to batches of frozen cocktails, you're still able to enjoy whatever it is you're sipping on because the flavor stays stronger for longer as your frozen drink melts.

If you're converting a standard cocktail recipe to a frozen one, plan on increasing the sugar content by at least 50%. This additional sugar should already be accounted for if you're using a recipe specifically for frozen cocktails. As for citrus juice, it should follow an equal ratio to the sugar component: For 2 ounces of simple syrup, add 2 ounces of lime juice. With this ratio trick in mind, consider pre-mixing all of your ingredients and freezing ahead of time before blending into a batch of frozen cocktails and serving. The colder and more frozen the mix is when it goes into the blender, the longer it stays frozen in the cocktail glass.