As a former cocktail caterer who has served drinks on mountain tops, in the woods, in horse corrals, backstage at music festivals, and to the 250 people eagerly awaiting a Caipirinhia the second they arrive onsite at a wedding from their party bus (that one still gives me nightmares), I have a few tricks up my sleeves to allow me to keep the party and the drinks flowing quickly and easily. For five years of my life I served cocktails and NA drinks at everything from intimate house parties to huge festival events, each with their own unique menus and equipment I could use to help me. I still use the tricks I learned all the time, whether I am batching portions of a cocktail behind the bar at the Simple Goodness Sisters Soda Shop to help our baretnders serve the line quickly, or I am having friends over at home.

Most of the time, I batch my cocktails ahead of time, sometimes I serve them in pitchers or self serve bars, or, I set up an interactive DIY bar as both a drink station and an activity for guests. After all, when I am hosting there is probably some bread to replenish, a water gun to fill, a request for a bandaid to address. Hosting, especially the way I do it which is usually with kids around, can be chaos. For me, it is the happiest kind of chaos, where each moment is filled with life and noise. I love it, AND also I want to enjoy the people around me rather than work at bartending.

I have these "lazy girl hosting" ideas all over our blog, from these posts, "Setting up a self serve drinks bar," "Our Favorite Spring Drinks for Wedding and Baby Showers" and this one, "How to Host the Modern Cocktail Party." Here, I'm going to tell you the basics you need to know to pre-batch your cocktails for hosting. Pre-mixing up cocktail ingredients in a big batch is the easiest way to serve drinks for a party, but there are some basic rules to follow to ensure they still taste good when you serve them hours or even days later.

Not every drink recipe is a good candidate for pre-batching. we will get into that more, but by mixing together all (or most) of the ingredients of a drink ahead of time, you can save yourself time and energy when serving a big group and still serve your group a consistent and delicious cocktail.

For an extremly elegant presentation, premix cocktails and bottle them in sealed glass bottles with labeled tags. The cocktail can easily go from the above photo to the below photo with just one pour. Photo by Caitlyn Nikula photography. Styling by Wander Event Rentals.

1. Pick the right recipe: This is the most important factor of batching cocktails. As a rule, stirred cocktails are far easier to batch than shaken cocktails. This is because most stirred cocktails contain only alcohol, sugar, and bitters, which are pretty stable ingredients. A batch of Old Fashioneds, for instance, will taste almost the same as the day you made them one month after, if prepared correctly. Stirred cocktails consisting of bitters and spirits, liquor and liqueurs, syrups and bitters will all batch beautifully if you measure them properly and then dillute them (see below.) Highball cocktails requiring a bubbly ingredient like club soda or tonic lose their effervesence quickly, especially in plastic or in heat and are less great candidates for pre-batching. Tea is a wonderful choice for a prebatch, as it stays consistent over time. Shaken cocktails are an even harder nut to crack. Yes, we will get a little science-y with this, because whether your ingredients will stay the same an hour or a day from when you add them hugely impacts your ability to batch drinks. Most shaken drinks call for fresh juices and/or things that can add texture, such as egg whites or beer. Drinks mage with egg whites and other foaming ingredients like aquafaba, beer, or just a hard shaken citrus cocktail will only hold their foam for a few minutes, making them a poor candidate to try to batch. Fresh juice, especially citrus juice, changes flavor within minutes. If you leave lemon, lime, or grapefruit juice on a counter top for a couple of hours you will see this, and can taste the difference: the solid pulp floats to the bottom. The flavor loses its roundness as the essential oils from the citrus fruit rind become more harsh. Bitterness and acid are the result, rather than the pleasing fresh lemon flavor. To stop this degredation of flavor and make juices shelf stable, processed juices add preservatives like citric acid, malic acid, etc. However, those preservatives all have their own off-flavor that they add to a cocktail, for the worse, so my advice is always to avoid using processed juices in your cocktails. You might just skip cocktails with fresh citrus when selecting your pre-batch drink. Or, follow the "cheat the system" rules below to hack it. Equally, muddled herb cocktails are not great candidates for pre-batching as the flavor of the herb will change greatly over time, releasing harsh tasting chemicals from the leaves as they soak, turning the whole mix bitter. Muddled berry cocktails, however would be fine, as the fruit is easier to work with. This is a HUGE reason why the Simple Goodness Sisters product line of garden to glass drink syrups was invented: so I could serve better prebatched cocktails to my cocktail catering clients. By adding these problematic ingredients to a mixer base I made ahead, I could avoid the pitfalls I just mentioned.
2. Cheat the system: So let's say you really want to pre-batch a basil lemonade. Based on the rules above, it's not a great candidate for prebatching. But, there are some things I learned as a cocktail caterer that you can do to keep the drink fresh and delicious tasting, even when it is made ahead. Sugar is a natural preservative for citrus juices. If you pe-squeeze and then fine strain your lemon juice to remove the pulp, and then add sugar right away, you'l be able to keep a good flavor for up to 12 hours. Do not leave any peels or sliced citrus in the mix, such as decorative lemon slices in a pitcher, as the rind will add a bitter flavor to the whole batch. Instead, slice those pretty slices and set them aside in the fridge, sealed, then add them just before serving. Better yet, freeze them into the ice cubes that you add just before serving so that the cocktail itself it evenly diluted and the ice acts as a mini shield against the rind's bitterness, while still giving you pretty color and texture in the glass. The best way to add sugar and basil? Make a simple syrup. Fresh basil wouldn't last well for hours in a cocktail batched ahead of time, but you can gently coax the basil flavor into a 50/50 sugar and water mix, or simple syrup. Infuse the simple syrup on low heat to add the flavor without bitterness, tasting as you go. Add the prepared, strained lemon juice and water to a pitcher, add the simple syrup, add your booze, and chill the whole thing in a fridge until you are ready to serve. Better yet, skip that whole process and buy one of our elevated and concentrated syrups for the easiest prebatch of all! Serve it in chilled glasses with fresh ice and a fresh basil garnish added to the glass just before serving, and no one will know that you made the whole thing in one go, hours ago.
3. Figure out what you can and cannot do ahead. On a stirred cocktail, you can absolutly mix up all ingredients, dillute and chill them and then pour them out later for a quick serve. Not every cocktail will be that easily prebatched. Sometimes I will just give myself and my guests a big headstart, but leave one step out so that the finished cocktail is extra fresh, even if the recipe isn't ideally suited to a big batch. An example of this would be a Moscow Mule with flavored simple syrup. To serve it wihout letting the ginger beer go flat, I might pre-measure shorts of vodka and syrup into cups, and garnish each herbs or flowers and a wedge of lime resting on the glass. Then, when guests go to the bar to grab one, they will also take ginger beer and ice from a nearby ice bucket and top off their own cocktail. This works equally well with any drinks calling for ginger beer, soda, club soda, or tonic. With one stir, the drink is completly fresh, but there is very little room for error- except of course, someone opting to just slug back the shot and skip the finish. Whether that is considered an "error" or a "party starter" is up to you! Could you mix up the whole thing and put it in a beverage dispenser, adding the bubbly ginger beer last just before guests arrive? Absolutly. But I wouldn't do so more than an hour before the party starts, or you're going to have lime tasting issues and flat bubbles on your ginger beer.
4. You must dillute: Dillution is key to making cocktails taste good, by softening the ingredients so they don't compete with one another. For cold drinks, this usually requires shaking or stirring just before serving the drink so that the drink not only chills, but slightly dillutes. When you prebatch a cocktail you ideally do these steps seperatly to ensure consistency for the large quantity you're making, by chilling the batch in a fridge and adding measured water for the correct amount of dillution. You've probably tasted the difference when you've poured a drink at home and skipped the shaking or stirring over ice, the first sips taste harsh while the eighth sip tastes far more mellow. To dillute a batched cocktail, simply add the total volume of the drink recipe by adding all the ingredients to get the total number of ounces in one cocktail. Then add 10% of that number in water. For example, if your cocktail recipe is 5 total ounces, add half an ounce of water for every one serving you've batched. Batching 10 drinks, or 50 ounces total? Then add 5 ounces of water to dillute the batch.
5. Stir or shake? Alternatively, you can prebatch all the ingredients without dilluting the drink and set a cocktail shaker or mixing glass out next to the drinks pitcher and an ice bucket and hand guests do a quick shake on their own. However, I only recommend this with a certain crowd for more chill events like dinner parties or cocktail specific parties. Inevitably, some people will skip this step, and drink harsh cocktails. It's not the end of the world but if you want to have consistent drinks for all, prebatch, chill, and dillute the drinks for your guests for foolproof service.
6. Storage matters: After you have batched your cocktail and you're chilling it, ensure that the drink is stored in a sealed container or aromas from your fridge can effect the flavor. Glass is ideal, especially if you've added any bubbly ingredients and you are attempting to keep the efferenvense fresh- but then be sure you don't fill it to the top! Leave some ead room on any bacthed cocktail with bubbles to account for the volume of the drink changing between temperatures or you will end up with a little explosion. I like a wide mouth juice bottle with a rubber cap to store stirred cocktails, a growler, a wide mouth mason jar, or an empty liquor bottle with the label removed and a screw cap or cork. It should be easy to pour from later, easy to label (sharpie pens work well or hanging price tags you can write on.) Bonus points if the top openiong fits a pour spout topper to make pouring ever cleaner and prettier. Using a big beverage dispenser? Never add pretty garnishes like herbs or flowers to it ore than a few minutes ahead of time. Add these last. Ideally, fill cups with ice instead of the big container, so that the drink doesn't become wtaery and over dilluted as it sits. Same rules apply for punch bowls, and recipes for a great punch can be found at my previous post, Simple Goodness Punch.
7. When to bubble: To avoid flat cocktails, add bubbles very last to cocktails that call for just an ounce or two of club soda to finish. If you've pre-batched all ingredients except the bubbly in a French 75, add the spaling wine just before serving- you are on the clock as soon as you do. Very quick pour drinks like a Seven and Seven or a Champagne Sparkler don't really have any business in a pre-batch. Instead, have glases and ice ready on trays, pre-chill your ingredients, and pour them quickly, just before serving. Better yet, follow these guidelines to set them up as a self serve bar. 
8. How to serve: The number one mistake of pre-batching is over service by picking the wrong sized cups or letting people choose their own cup. Most people don't realize how small a serving of a cocktail actually is. Some stirred drinks are just 2-3 ounces. Martinis cap off at about 3 ounces. Most cocktails will fall below 6 ounces. This is understandably confusing because when they're served at a bar in a 12 ounce glass full of ice, yoy wouldn't know the drink volume is actually so small. Further confusing things is that when ,mIny people see larger cocktails, the sugar and juice filled mixer is what is making them tall- not actually more booxe. Typically fmerican drink reicpes call for .5 to 2.5 ounces of alcohol. More is reserved to very few recipes such as AMF's and Long Island Iced Tea. If you're just looking to get tanked, then fill your red solo cup all the way up. If a well balanced cocktail is your goal, be sure that your glasware size matches your drink serving size. Most people will NOT use enough ice. People have a strange scarcity mindset with ice and will end at one scoop so don't count on them filling the cup all the way- make up the difference by serving in a smaller cup. Bartenders know that the amount of ice matters to keep the surface temp of the drink cool enough that it can chill quickly without the ice having to melt down to chill the drink. Always go smaller than you think you need- more trips to the bar is fine. Accidentally drinking 3 cocktails because they fit in one cup and you didn't know you were ingesting that much alcohol in one trip is more problematic. Teacups, jam jars and vintage martini cups you have thrifted are all good reusable choices for parties. If you're serving with dispsables a 9 oz plastic cup is likely the smallest that you will find, and should be filled all the way with ice before people serve themselves. If you choose that cup, don't choose a 3 ounce martini recipe or your guests will overimbibe without realizing it.
9. Save money by pre-batching: as costs on everything go up, the case to stay in and make drinks for friends get stronger. A batch of this Simple Goodness Spritz recipe should cost you (in 2023 pricing) about $4.50 per serving to prepare at home. Compare that to a typical cocktail price of $10-13 at a bar depending on your location, and for a round of 6, you'll save at least $33, plus the cost of gas and tip. So why not stay in for your next girls gathering? As a bar owner myself, I can tell you, the savings is real. Bars costs are onky about a third product or food costs. The rest of your menu item price accounts for the labor to serve it to you (minimum wage in our area is $15.75, after all) and the overhead of the location- things like rent, insurance, licensing heat, and maintenance costs for the ice machine and refrigerators.