1. Leave no Trace
2. Be safe
3. Transportation
4. Weather
5. Ice & Where/How You’re Serving
6. The Question of Citrus
7. Glass, “glass,” or flask? (drinking vessels)
8. To Garnish or not to garnish

Leave No Trace: Pack It In, Pack It Out

The most important principal of outdoor cocktailing is pack out what you pack in: don’t leave ice, garnish, lemon pips, broken glass or anything else where you’ve enjoyed your drink.  It can and will acclimate wild animals to humans, attract varmits, and damage the habitat you’re serving in. Don’t be that guy. Don’t pour out your drink in the ground, or dump your ice. The sugar and alcohol can and will injure plants, as can the ice. The smell of “food” might also attract animals whose time would be better served finding actual food instead of the traces of cocktail we’ve left behind.

And, since this is all just the pleasant face of social media dystopia, please remember the newest LNT principle: leave the geotags at your favorite brunch spot.

Please be safe

Do not drink when climbing, or when you’re responsible for any technical or dangerous activities. Make sure to have enough food, water and time to drive home safely, leave the booze behind when traveling into areas where it is prohibited, and remember that drinking enough that you break your ankle is a much more unpleasant problem to have than everyone having small cocktails.

Transporting cocktails

Single cocktails can be most easily transported via flask in 1-4 servings, depending on the size of your flask/vessel. Very acidic cocktails should not be transported in unlined metal flasks. For multi-day camping trips, you can prepare cocktails and chill them and pack them in your cooler, or pack ingredients and stash cocktail ice in thermoses in your cooler for multiday trips.

Weather Considerations

General guidelines: think about how cold or hot it’ll be and figure out what drink will work best: hot toddies aren’t really suited for a hot afternoon in the desert, but a gin rickey is just about perfect. Pebbled ice drinks sure look nice in snow, but you won’t be able to taste them and they’ll be deeply–tooth-chatteringly–uncomfortable to drink (ask me how I know!). Generally, aim for less ice the colder it gets.

A stirred or built drink served over ice is perfect next to a campfire almost any season!

Ice & Where/How You’re Serving

There are a few ways to think about ice in your cocktails, but it boils down to how you’re chilling the drink: drinks served up are pre-chilled by shaking or stirring and strained, and drinks that may or may not be pre-chilled but are served over ice, which provides continual chilling (and dilution).

Unless you’re packing cocktails intended to be served at ambient temperature (I can’t tell you how excited I am to share SCAFFAS with you), you have to think about ice: how to bring it, how to keep it cold, and how you want to use it.  Generally, the easiest way to haul ice is in a good quality thermos that has an insulated lid.

• Large cubes or spheres of ice stay solid and cold longer than small cubes/spheres or crushed ice, and solid ice from an ice cube tray or mold like these [reference page] will keep much longer than ice machine ice of almost any variety.
• On the Rocks: pack one cube for each drink you plan to make, and build the drink in the glass.  Stir in the glass gently, but you can just allow the drink to chill and dilute by sitting
• Served up: pack about one cube for each drink you plan to make.  You can usually get away with one less cube than the number of drinks you plan to make, especially with stirred drinks, but if the weather is hot, plan on one cube per drink.  You can dump the leftover ice in your water bottle and enjoy cool water on your way.

Crushed ice drinks are definitely not out of the realm of possibility, but it requires more planning and they’re generally a bit of a pain. On the other hand, if you recycle your ice through multiple drinks (give a decent rinse between drinks and your old-fashioned ice will find at least one more life to chill a sour), it can be a great way to handle the last bits of ice.

For multiday trips with access to a cooler, you can do some really cool stuff with a little planning, like freeze blocks inside thermoses to maximize chill. On day four, when you’re opening the flask, it’ll have melted just enough to pry out of the thermos.

And, for what it’s worth: clear ice lasts a bit longer than regular ice, but it’s not quite as simple to arrange and not actually necessary.

Citrus: Juicing Your Drink

Generally speaking, citrus is best fresh.  If you don’t mind hauling a reamer or hand-press, that’s going to taste better than packing citrus into a flask. Any kind of citrus peel garnish is also best fresh off the fruit, since the pores that hold the aromatic oils quickly lose their ability to hold the oil, so pre-peeling your citrus means you can reduce your ability to garnish the way you’re meant to.  The aromatic oils in citrus juice dissipate relatively quickly, so if your drink depends on the aromatics less than the sour/bitter notes, pre-pressing your drink will leave you with a less-good cocktail. On the other hand, if the choice is between not-100%-best cocktail and no cocktail…

Glass, “glass,” or flask?

So, glass: it breaks.  While I have a patent-pending double-fluffy sock method of transporting glasses and nice glassware is part of the experience of a drink, you can have just as good an experience with something that weighs less and doesn’t have a propensity to break into useless sharp fragments when flock of mosquitoes fly into your shirt and you bump your glass and it falls over and somehow strikes the only rock within 20 feet.

Excellent options for your mobile drinkware include an enameled steel camping mug, plastic cups, these seemingly-frivolous-but-actually-amazing rocks “glasses” from hydroflask, or this range of fairly attractive acrylics from Cocktail Kingdom.  For drinks intended as flask cocktails, there’s no need to bother with glassware or “glass”ware unless you’re feeling fancy or want to impress your friends with your careful foresight or are just prissy (cough, cough, no one here is at all prissy).

To Garnish or not To Garnish?

For the most part, garnish is there for a reason. Rare is the drink with a citrus peel that doesn’t depend on a little citrus oil atop the drink for the correct balance and flavor.  Some cocktails don’t have garnish, and are straightforward options for backpacking or camping. If you don’t mind carrying a peeler and a lemon or a tiny jar of cherries, go for it, because it does make a difference.  Your drink won’t be ruined without the garnish, but if you’re going to commit to a hiking cocktail, you might as well go big (this does not include extravagant pineapple leaf cocktail garnish, but, really: you do you, as long as you pack out what you pack in).