Summer is the perfect time for cocktails. We’re off work, the holidays are stretching out in front of us, and we can finally relax with something long and cool.

These gin cocktails make the perfect summer serve – whether you’re at home, by the pool or picnicking in the park – they’ll leave you feeling refreshed in more ways than one!

Cheers!

 

 

Tom Collins

A Tom Collins is one of the classic long gin cocktails but there’s a lot of controversy around its origins, with numerous people laying claim to the invention. Apparently, the earliest record for Tom Collins was written by Jerry Thomas, the father of American mixology, in 1876.

Ingredients

2oz gin

¾ oz simple syrup

¾ oz lemon juice

Soda water

Steps

1. Fill a Collins glass with ice and keep it in the freezer.
2. Pour in gin, lemon juice, and simple syrup in a cocktail shaker.
3. Add ice and shake until well-chilled.
4. Strain into the chilled Collins glass.

 

 

Negroni Swizzle

‘Swizzling’ is a way to chill the drinks by twirling a swizzle stick between your palms. Try this swizzled cocktail overflowing with ice to cool you off this summer.

Ingredients

1 oz gin

1 oz Campari

1 oz sweet vermouth

1 oz soda water

Steps

1. Fill a highball glass with crushed ice.
2. Add gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth.
3. Swizzle with a bar spoon until your glass frosts up.
4. Add the soda water.
5. Garnish with a piece of orange or twist.

 

 

Takumi’s Aviation

The Aviation is usually purple, made with Creme de Violette. However, when Takumi Watanabe, a Japanese bartender at The Sailing Bar, did not have the Creme de Violette on hand, he made do by using Parfait D’Amour which gives it a distinctive blue colour.

Ingredients

½ oz gin

½ oz maraschino liqueur

1 bar spoon parfait d’amour

⅓ oz fresh lemon juice

Steps

1. Combine all the ingredients into your cocktail shaker
2. Shake with ice
3. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass
4. Garnish with a twist of lemon

 

 

Cucumber and Gin Cocktail

This cocktail is a riff on the cucumber cooler, but takes it to the next level by using cucumber juice instead of the diced cucumber. The result is a refreshing green cocktail – the Incredible Hulk in a glass!

Ingredients

1 unpeeled cucumber

1 lime, cut into quarters.

2 oz gin

3 oz cucumber juice

1 tsp sugar

Mint leaves

Soda water

Ice

Steps

1. Cut up the cucumber and pulse in a food processor.
2. Strain using a cheesecloth or coffee filter.
3. Fill a tumbler with ice.
4. Using a peeler, cut a long strip of cucumber and arrange it to the side of the tumbler.
5. Muddle half a lime, 2 mint leaves, and 1 tsp sugar
6. Add the gin and cucumber juice into the muddling glass.
7. Add ice and shake vigorously.
8. Drop 2 quarter slices of the lime into the tumbler.
9. Strain the cocktail mixture into the tumbler.
10. Top with soda water

 

 

 

Gin Gin Mule

A modern classic, the gin-gin mule was created by Audrey Saunders of New York City’s Pegu Club. While it’s often thought of as a Moscow Mule with gin, it also has a bit of mojito influence. Either way, you look at it, it’s incredibly easy to make and a fabulous drink you’re sure to love.

As the name indicates, there are two “gins” in this recipe. The first is gin—as in the botanical liquor we know and love for everything from the martini to the gin and tonic. The second is ginger beer, that snappy soda that makes the Moscow mule a truly great drink. When you muddle in a little lime, syrup, and mint, the drink’s flavour has a refreshing contrast.

Ingredients

8 mint leaves

3/4 oz lime juice (fresh)

1 oz simple syrup

1 1/2 oz gin

4 to 5 oz ginger beer (enough to fill)

Garnish: mint sprig

Steps

1. In a cocktail shaker, add the mint leaves, lime juice, and simple syrup. Muddle well to release the essence of the herbs.
2. Add gin and fill the shaker with ice
3. Shake well
4. Strain into a highball glass filled with fresh ice
5. Top up with ginger beer
6. Add a sprig of mint to garnish

 

Singapore Sling

A holiday classic, everything about a Singapore Sling screams lounging on a beach or propping up a pool-side bar. It’s also one of those cocktails that bartenders like to put their own twist on, so you’ll see variations everywhere you go. If you want to make this version even more special, you can use Cointreau instead of triple sec.

Ingredients

2 oz gin

½ oz triple sec

¾ oz Cherry Heering liqueur

½ oz Benedictine DOM Liqueur

½ oz lime juice

½ oz grenadine

3 oz pineapple juice

2 dash Angostura bitters

Cherry, pineapple wedge and cocktail umbrella for garnish

Steps

1. Pour all the ingredients into a cocktail shaker.
2. Strain into a tall glass full of ice.
3. Garnish with a cherry and a pineapple wedge skewered together with a cocktail umbrella

 

Recipes provided by Advanced Mixology

The underlying message of our blogs is, inevitably, buy our gin. And you should: it’s absolutely delicious and wonderfully classic. The underlying message of this blog, however, is that you should buy our gin… and bottles of several other things, such as Campari, mezcal, vermouth and Aperol. Why? Because domestic cocktail making is on the rise, thanks to social media – and last year’s remarkable British summer.

We’ll add the expected caveats to that statement, of course, in that you should – please! – continue to drink responsibly and that you shouldn’t feel pressured to make your own cocktails just because that’s, as we’re about to demonstrate, what the (very) cool kids do so they can show their creations on Instagram. But if you are so inclined, it’s a very good opportunity to improve the way you drink – and improve the way you make drinks because, as our recipe section suggests, we do think all drinkers (and, particularly, Fifty Pounds Gin drinkers) should have a couple of faultless cocktails up their sleeve. Making cocktails at home is a fine way to learn a little more about what goes into your drinks, their creation and flavour profiles, all of which will, perhaps, help you develop a greater appreciation of your drinks cabinet AND the mixologist’s art. Because, while Instagram is clearly a hugely visual medium, the current craze is less about the elaborate creations of recent years, and more about the simple, subtler side of the art. Although, to be fair, your Instagram success may depend a little on how photogenic you are as well as the prettiness of your glassware…

According to the Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA), last year saw a massive revival in liqueur sales. Figures now available for 2018 show that some 42m bottles were consumed across the UK’s homes, bars, pubs and restaurants.

Much of this figure comes from the remarkable 74% of UK bars that now serve cocktails – a number that seems to increase week on week in cities such as London – although, as mentioned above, the long hot summer certainly played a part. The WSTA reports that, in the 12 weeks to September, shops and supermarkets saw a whopping 56% rise in “non-cream liqueur sales”, equating to some four million bottles, and an increase of 1.4m from the same period in 2017.

Summer 2018 “saw an explosion in popularity of herbal bitter liqueurs and red-orange aperitifs mixed with sparkling wine,” explains the WSTA report. “These drinks, served in pretty stem glasses, proved very Instagrammable, and consumers were keen to share their snaps of the vibrant, colourful cocktails on social media.”

(Don’t worry about the cream liqueurs though. Even in the warmth, the likes of Baileys and Kahlua also saw an upturn in sales, with a 33% increase compared to 2017.)

The idea of “Drinkstagram” – or, to give it is more expected prefix #drinkstagram – has been well documented over the last couple of years, from national papers to great drinks business publications such as Diffords Guide. The cocktail making art has always been a visual one, hence this micro-blogging and photographic app has become its natural home.

While many people are using Instagram to document their life – from coffee art to pretty shop fronts, spectacular breakfasts to a pair of new shoes – to an audience of family and friends, a number of people are carving out a huge following and turning that following into a viable business opportunity. The Drinkstagram community is no different -although they do have one advantage in that, for the most part, you can recreate much of what they do yourself, wherever you are in the world. Looking attractive in a $1000-a-night hotel suite while wearing a designer watch and a pair of expensive shoes is something most of us will never be able to do. Making a cocktail inside a chocolate bunny because you saw it on Instagram, however, is something you can have a crack at in the comfort of your own home.

That particular example comes from Australian mixologist @cocktailsbykurtis but there are plenty of “amateurs” out there, such as the brilliantly named “apartment bartender” who’s turning a love of cocktail making into something bigger, while inspiring – at this point – around 56,000 people with his regular recipes. The same applies to the likes of @beautifulbooze – who mixes travel and creative drinking to great effect.

If you want to track down this wealth of drinks creation, it’s worth noting a few of the more popular drink-based hashtags. We’ve already pointed you towards #drinkstagram but #drinksofinstagram is also worth a look, ditto #instadrinks, #cocktailhour, #mixology, #cocktailgram and the very-to-the-point #cocktails. All of these should offer you hundreds of recipes to consider or, at the very least, keep you colourfully entertained for a few minutes.

So where does Fifty Pounds fit into this? Well, we see this rise of the simple, wonderfully coloured photogenic cocktail as something that’s riding on the back of the gin craze: think Negroni, think Aviation, think classic Bramble…  They’re all great starting points for home mixologists. They’re all excellent cocktails to master and will always win you fans. Perhaps most importantly, they’re all very good starting points before you move on to some of the more complex things you will no doubt find online.

If this article has inspired you to get mixing, do let us know. You can find us on Instagram at @fiftypoundsgin and we’d love it if you tag us into your photos. There’s no pressure though. Domestic mixology is meant to be fun and, whatever happens – or however many attempts it takes – the best thing about these drinks is not that they’re pretty. It’s that they’re pretty delicious.