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Alcoholic Lemonade Recipes: Sweet Summer Cocktails Featuring America's Favorite Homemade Beverage
Traditionally, lemonade is a summer time drink that has become practically synonymous with refreshment. Adults looking to add some kick to this seasonal favorite, might find recipes utilizing alcohol and lemonade a bit scarce. As a low-grade drunkard and a class-A lemoande lover, though, I've managed to successfully combine two of my favorite things about summer together in a number of cool homemade lemonade cocktail recipes.
These drinks are all light, cold, and perfect for a hot day. For the most part, they're extremely easy to make and don't require any complicated mixology. Just make your lemonade, mix some ingredients, and you're made in the shade.
All of these cocktails use my own homemade lemonade recipe as the base. If you simply must, it is possible to use storebought lemonade or lemonade from concentrate, but doing it yourself will make it taste just that much better.
Ingredients
- 5 or 6 cups water
- 6 large lemons, Big lemons are ideal, but you can increase the amount used if they're smaller
- 1 cup sugar
Instructions
- Fill up a pitcher with 5 to 6 cups of water. Filtered water is better, but you'll be just fine drawing from the tap.
- Add sugar. You can use more or less sugar depending on how sweet or tart you prefer your lemonade to be, but try not to use less than 3/4 of a cup.
- Take one of your lemons and place it flat against the counter. Roll it back and forth with your hands, lightly pressing down. This will make it easier to juice. If you have a juicer handy, use that to squeeze your fruit. If not, just cut the lemon in half with a sharp knife and squeeze it over your pitcher. Be sure to really squeeze every part of the lemon to get all the juice you can out of it.
- Repeat step 3 with the rest of your lemons. Be sure to leave between one and three halves of squeezed lemons to add into the pitcher after you've finished!
- Mix the lemonade until fully blended.
- Add in a few lemon halves, this will add some extra flavor to your lemonade. Plus, it looks great!
Now that you have your lemonade made, it's time to start adding some choice alcohols.
Alcoholic Arnold Palmer
Arnold Palmers are one of my favorite summer drinks: typically, an Arnold Palmer is just half lemonade and half ice tea, but what happens when you want to make it more of an adult libation? Here's a super-simple alcoholic Arnold Palmer recipe.
Ingredients
- Lemonade as described above
- Ice
- Either Jeremiah Weed or Firefly Sweet Tea infused vodka
- Thinly sliced lemon
Add 4-6 ounces of sweet tea vodka to lemonade, shake well in a mixer filled with ice. Garnish with a slice of lemon. Serve over ice!
Lemonade Margaritas
Here's my take on a hot weather classic. Substituting the sweet taste of lemonade for the tart of lime juice, this is an easy to make lemonade cocktail that's perfect for parties. Either make them by the glass or increase the portions by five to make a pitcher.
Ingredients
- 2 Ounces Tequilla
- 1/2 Ounce Triple Sec
- 1 Ounce Lemonade
- Sugar
- Ice
Mix the tequilla, lemonade, and Triple Sec together and shake over ice. Wet the rim of a cocktail glass with water and dust it with sugar. Strain cocktail into glass, serve! On particularly hot days, feel free to serve it over ice instead of straining.
Extremely Pink Lemonade
Pink lemonade can be made a lot of different ways, but I personally prefer watermelon. If you're like me, the idea of adding watermelon to your alcoholic lemonade cocktail is making your mouth water already. Don't wait, just make it immediately.
Ingredients
- 4 ounces of lemonade
- 3 medium sized cubed slices of watermelon
- 1 ounce melon liqueur
- 1 ounce vodka
- Ice
- 1 watermelon cube for garnish
Take the watermelon cubes and crush them in a bowl. You'll want the juice, but feel free to add the crushed melon to the drink to add some texture to the cocktail. Mix over ice with lemonade, liqueur, and vodka. Serve in a highball glass and garnish with a cube of watermelon.
Looking for more?
If you liked these lemonade cocktail recipes, why not look around and try some more unique libations? Maybe something like these delicious Pomegranate Champagne Cocktails?
