Jazz Up Your Campfire Pow-Wow with These Great Camping Cocktails
Bring a 12-pack of beer is a given when you’re going camping. But, what if you want something with a little more punch? Here’s a collection of our favorite camping cocktails that’ll make your camping trip a little more fun!
Don’t you love the crackling of a campfire? The radiating heat and the warm glow it gives people’s faces? What if you could add an awesome camping cocktail to that mix?
You’re probably thinking, I don’t want to bring my whole bar cart to the tent! It’s heavy!
We’ve thought that through. All the cocktails on our list use three ingredients max and we did our best to pick versatile mixers. With lemonade, beer, and whiskey you’ve got options for two drinks.
Learn how you can stretch that to make three camping cocktails below.
The Summer Shandy
What’s better than a beer? A glass of beer and a refreshing glass of lemonade at the same time.
Enter, the Summer Shandy. It’s not as acidic as mixing lemonade with hard liquor and you get the carbonation of the beer.
Bring the beer and the bottle of lemonade along in your cooler. The kids can have lemonade while the grownups get fancy. Learn more!
The best beers to pair with lemonade are light ales, light IPAs, or Pilsners. Don’t try it with the powder mix-in. Spring for a bottle of nice premixed lemonade, stored by the juices.
An Old Fashioned
When choosing the drinks for this list, we thought, “what is the least we have to carry?” You don’t need much to make an old-fashioned!
A small bottle of bitters, sugar, bourbon, water. You were bringing water and sugar anyway.
The Maple Leaf
If you can’t decide between these two, there’s a third drink that you can make with lemonade and bourbon. A maple leaf!
Pour a shot or so of bourbon, mix with twice the amount of lemonade and add maple syrup on top. If you didn’t bring any maple, sugar or honey will also do.
That’s three drinks you can make, without bringing extra ingredients for the third.
A Hot Toddy
What’s better than hot tea around the campfire or fireplace (we like glamping). All you need for a hot toddy is tea and whiskey.
We like a sweet or citrus tea, like lemon ginger or anything with apple. Boil the water first, steep the tea and add your whiskey at the end.
If you want to be fancy, add a cinnamon stick for stirring/garnish. If you have fruit on hand, squeeze a little juice into the mug.
Whiskey Coke
Yes, this simple and classic drink travels well! All you need are cans of coke (or bottles) and whiskey.
For less trash to take care of and pack-out, don’t even bother with a cup. Drink some of the coke and pour the whiskey in. Pour it slowly to keep the carbonation from overflowing.
It mixes in the can and you have the whiskey on-hand for a hot toddy. To reduce what you have to carry, even more, tape the tea bag (find the kind that are individually wrapped) to your coke can.
Now you have everything you need for two drinks in one place. Leave the straw at home though, the less trash you bring into the campsite the better!
You need to pack out what you pack in, so save yourself the effort.
Whiskey Ginger
You should always have a ginger ale on hand, it’s a cure for just about anything. Ginger is an ancient remedy for headaches, nausea, upset stomachs – it’s nature’s Pepto Bismol.
You can also mix ginger ale with almost anything. Lemonade, orange juice, anything sweet.
Whiskey and ginger ale? A winning combination.
And, it’s one other can you have to bring with you, instead of a few different things to mix with.
You can use the same trick of mixing it in-can to reduce trash and possible pollution.
Fewer dishes to carry and clean at home too!
Berry Smash
Are you camping somewhere you can pick berries in the wild? Make sure they’re berries you recognize before you try them!
If you happen upon a blackberry or blueberry bush, pick some and wash them off with bottled water.
Then squeeze them into an empty bottle, squishing them a little as you go. Add some sugar or honey and some whiskey. Maybe some ginger ale for good measure.
Put the cap on and shake until everything is well mixed. Using your camping knife, slice open the bottle so the berries can escape. You don’t want that deliciousness stuck in the bottleneck!
Pour and serve. It’ll be nice and frothy from shaking and summer-sweet from the berries. What could be better?
Camping Coffee
You don’t need a fancy cream-based bottle of Baileys to make your camping mornings great. All you need is a little whiskey.
Put a few dashes in your coffee in the morning and see how well it warms you up!
Obviously don’t over do it if you’re going on a hike or doing anything physical. You can’t be tripping over rocks or making drunk decisions in dangerous circumstances.
That stands for all the drinks on this list. It’s nice to relax, but your safety comes first.
Camping Cocktails
When you’re planning a camping trip, make sure you bring what you need for water and food first. Your hydration is very important when you’re in the wilderness.
Alcohol dehydrates you so make sure you have a serving of water for all the camping cocktails you throw down.
Create as little trash as you can and reuse what you bring. Like our tips about mixing your cocktails in-can!
It’s all about having the most fun and leaving the least evidence that you were there.
See ya out there!
