Long Island Ice Tea is a unique alcoholic cocktail that harmoniously combines five types of alcohol: gin, vodka, rum, tequila, orange liqueur. Its name translates from English as “Long Island Iced Tea”. I will teach you how to make this cocktail at home.
Long Island Iced Tea is a popular 28% alcoholic cocktail with simple preparation technology and simple ingredients. It looks and smells like iced tea. Due to these properties, during Prohibition in the United States (1920-1933), it was served under the guise of a soft drink.
Composition and proportions:
- vodka – 20 ml;
- golden rum – 20 ml;
- gin – 20 ml;
- silver tequila – 20 ml;
- orange liqueur (Cointreau or Triple Sec) – 20 ml;
- lemon juice – 20 ml;
- cola – 100 ml;
- ice in cubes – 150-200 grams.
Classic Long Island Ice Tea recipe
The technology of preparation consists of five stages:
1. Fill a tall glass with ice cubes.
2. Add gin, vodka, rum, tequila, liqueur, juice and cola one by one.
3. Mix all the ingredients with a spoon.
4. Top the cocktail with a slice of lemon or a cherry.
5. Serve with a straw.
There is an alternative cocktail recipe that uses different proportions, details in the video.
Attention! Long Island Ice Tea is very easy to drink, but its high strength leads to rapid intoxication, I recommend drinking no more than two servings at a time.
History reference. There are three plausible versions of the appearance of this cocktail. None of them could be proved, so we will briefly review each.
1. Disguise. The most beautiful version. During Prohibition, bartenders on Long Island (part of New York) learned how to make a strong cocktail that looked like iced tea. Visitors and owners of establishments were not afraid of a fine, since the police had no reason to check.
2. Competition. New Yorkers loved to play the fun game of walking along Long Island drinking a drink at every bar they met. The winner was the one who himself reached the end of the street. Knowing this, the bartenders of the first places on the way of the players went to the trick. They began to offer visitors a very strong cocktail, one serving of which knocked them off their feet.
As a result, the competitors simply could not go further. They stayed at the first bar they met, continuing to spend their money there. After some time, the rules of the game changed, people began to compete in the amount of “strong ice tea” drunk.
3. Alcohol and love. According to this version, the Long Island Ice Tea cocktail was invented by bartender Robert Batt. A man who liked to drink whiskey often came to his institution. But after a fair dose of alcohol, he lost control of himself and made a brawl. Beloved girl forced him to make a choice – her or whiskey. The man chose his beloved.
At the next party, the girl allowed her beloved to drink only iced tea. When she left, the man asked a friend of the bartender to add strong alcohol to his tea. The bartender did not lose his head and poured everything he had at hand: vodka, gin, rum, tequila and orange liqueur. Nobody noticed the change. Later, instead of tea, cola was added to the cocktail.