How to Make Cocktails While Camping - Panergy

Backpackers definitely need to lighten their load, and while car campers can pretty much pack a full bar, it’s still best to keep things relatively simple. You probably don’t want to deal with 10 different bottles of booze, plus bitters, fat washes, and egg foams at a picnic table (but you do you). Bring just a few bottles of alcohol—like vodka, whiskey or bourbon, and maybe a liqueur—that you can combine in various forms or sip straight. Bring mixers you’ll enjoy on their own too. Unlike pre-made bottled cocktail mixers, soda, fruit juice, lemonade, V-8, apple cider, and iced tea pull double duty during the day.

Since it can be a pain to clean up in camp, you’re generally better off sticking to cocktails that are stirred right in the glass. If you do want to make like James Bond, shake things up in a Nalgene bottle and drink out of it afterward. Or if you don’t mind washing an actual shaker, this speckled enamel one is pretty charming, but you can also get a sturdier stainless steel shaker with nesting cups specially designed for camping (it even has a citrus juicer!).

If you have a cooler, you can obviously use it to chill your drink components, but space is often at a premium, and the more frequently you open the lid, the less effective it is at keeping things cold. You probably definitely don’t want to use the actual half-melted ice inside the cooler in your drinks, so it’s helpful to choose booze and cocktails that don’t need to be chilled. A Manhattan will work; a daiquiri, maybe not so much.

That said, you can always get creative and chill bottles in lakes, streams, and snow if they’re at hand, but it’s worth getting acquainted with intentionally room temperature drinks. If you must have ice, freeze oversize cubes that will melt much more slowly and seal them in a double layer of zippered bags before stashing them in your drinks cooler.

If you’re hiking in, you’ll need to watch your pack weight. One option is to bring along miniature bottles of booze, which also means you can bring a bigger variety. If you don’t want to sip them straight, mixing them with powdered drink concentrates is a classic move, although perhaps not always the tastiest option. You can also decant various alcohols into tightly sealed plastic bags and nestle them in a Nalgene bottle, which will double as your drinking glass, or invest in soft polyurethane pouches with screw caps for more security.

Another good strategy is to craft your cocktails ahead of time and tote them along in flasks or canteens (or insulated growlers if it’s gonna be a long weekend). Choose a cocktail that won’t suffer from being stored and doesn’t need to be chilled (i.e. high in alcohol without a lot of extras). Figure out how many ounces your container holds, then do a little math to determine how many servings you can funnel in there, mix them up in a pitcher, and pour into your portable vessel. Take caution when batching drinks with bitters and citrus, which can become overwhelming in larger quantities. See this guide to flask cocktails for more info.