Frozen cocktails to make (and drink) right now

The clink of ice in a glass, the clatter of a good shake, the smooth stream of a measured pour — the sounds of cocktail hour can be a balm. But there are times when you just want the drink, not the multistep ritual or the cleanup. Enter freeze-ahead cocktails, ideally suited to pouring and drinking à la minute.

The freeze-ahead method is almost too easy: Prebatch your chosen cocktail, chill overnight in the freezer, pour. But as simple as this is, the resulting drinks are as nuanced and texturally complex as they are efficient. A long freeze smooths the harsher edges of high-proof spirits and also shifts the cocktail’s final consistency, resulting in a well-rounded drink with a velvety, rich mouthfeel.

Spirit-forward drinks without perishable ingredients (such as citrus juice) are the most freezer-friendly as their higher alcohol content prevents them from freezing fully through. This means many boozy cocktail-hour darlings — martinis, Manhattans, Negronis and so on — make the frozen cut. Batch and pour one of the aforementioned classics or reach for recipes that take a bit of creative liberty while maintaining a high-ABV (alcohol by volume) status.

A twist on the gin-forward classic, the Fino Martini swaps in sherry for the original’s dry vermouth and a small yet vibrant pour of orange liqueur. Like the Fino Martini, the Brandy au Cassis is best served in an appropriately frosty glass and combines sweet, fruit-forward crème de cassis (a blackcurrant liqueur) with brandy and sweet vermouth. Finally, the Tequila Negroni is a robust, bitter-leaning combination of tequila, blanc vermouth and gentian liqueur measured in equal parts and served, traditionally, over a large ice cube.

Whichever recipe you choose to batch and freeze, it’s important to remember to dilute. Essential to the balance of the final drink, dilution often happens as a cocktail is being chilled — during the process of shaking or stirring the drink’s ingredients with ice. However, because these batched, prepared-ahead drinks are built directly in the bottle and garner their deep chill not from ice but an overnight freeze, there’s no stirring or shaking involved — and thus, no organic dilution. To account for this, add distilled water. In general, factor in between ¾ ounce to 1½ ounces of distilled water per serving, keeping in mind that the higher the proof the more dilution the cocktail is able to handle.

Whether you’re pouring a single drink to cap a busy day or a frosty round to start a night of entertaining, this make-ahead approach to cocktail hour is a key to laid-back — and ice-cold — warm weather drinking.

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