You’ve had pre-batched and bottled cocktails. Take your cocktail game to the next level with these flask cocktails.
You can always fill a flask with your preferred spirit, but imagine sipping on your favourite cocktail when you’re camping, going on a hike, a snow trip or enjoying a picnic.
Flask cocktails have their advantages when you’re on-the-go. The portable cocktails can be pre-measured, built ahead of time and poured directly into the flask. All it takes is a gentle swirl or two to mix the cocktail and it’s ready to drink.
You’re most likely to be sipping the cocktail straight from the flask so in the recipes that follow, water has been added to factor in the dilution you normally get from stirring or shaking. For more information, here’s how to calculate dilution when pre-batching cocktails.
When it comes to what makes a good flask cocktail, aside from keeping it simple and spirit-forward, here are a few key points to keep in mind.
Tips for Making Flask Cocktails
- Choose a cocktail that will taste good at room temperature.
- Spirit-forward and stirred cocktails are better suited to flask cocktails and they can easily be paired with a modifier or two.
- Modifiers such as flavoured syrups, liqueurs, amaro, vermouth, fortified wines, bitters are well-suited to flask cocktails.
- Dark spirits such as whisky, whiskey, rum work better in a flask than white spirits. A Martini, for example would be too warm by the time you drink it.
- If budget allows it, use quality spirits as you’ll be tasting the base spirit in the cocktail at room temperature.
- Shaken cocktails, drinks with citrus juice or with a sparkling ingredient (eg French 75) are best avoided.
- Citrus juice can be used at your discretion. Depending on how long the drink has been in the flask, the cocktail may end up taking in the metallic flavour from the flask.
- Avoid cocktails with egg white and cream-based liqueurs as they will eventually break down and split.
- Just like pre-batched cocktails, recipes can be scaled up to fill a flask but go easy on bitters as it can overpower a cocktail.
- Once you’ve made the cocktail, store the prepared flask in the fridge until you’re ready to transport.
To get you started, here are three spirit-forward flask cocktails. Click on the next page below for all three recipes.
