What is your favorite alcoholic cocktail?

French 75 (use good champagne)
French 76 (use good champagne)
Old fashioned (use expensive cherries)
Side car (use orange brandy instead of orange liqueur)
Manhattan (don't skimp on bitters)
Cosmopolitan (throw the used lime into the shaker)
Whiskey sour (use egg white)
Gimlet (add a cedar leaf for more flavor)
Fresh fruit is a must to make the best drinks.
- Second the whiskey sour (with egg white) and the Manhattan..
  ..and I'll add a Moscow Mule when on a sunny patio and it's a scorching day
  
  Kentucky Mule here. Bourbon rather than vodka.
  I also recommend Bundaberg ginger beer in any mule.
- I like the cut of your jib! 🎩
  Great list. Missing Sazerac, but someone else has you covered already.
  Off to find a cedar leaf, I haven't tried that...
- Whiskey sour (use egg white)
  I've never heard of putting an egg white in those. What does that do?
  
  Adds texture, almost creamy. Shake the hell out of the drink until it gets a nice foam topping.
- Adding to your list:
  Sloe gin sour
  Sloe gin fizz
- Never heard them called leaves before, only needles so that's cool.
  Gin and Tonic with fresh Rosemary and Orange is nice. Bet a cedar leaf would be nice in there too.
- My absolute favorite is New Your Sour (Basically Whiskey Sour with a dash of red wine (and slightly different mixing ratios. Last time I made them with Acquafaba (basically bean water; the water you get from a can of chick peas) instead of egg white and let me tell you, that worked like a charm, can only recommend!

A gin and tonic.
I also like ginger, so a ginger mule with gin is also a favorite
- I second the gun and tonic. I enjoy them quite often.
  
  🔫
  
  Is that the American recipe?
- Hello Me!
  But I’ll add a dry martian in there too! Gin, vermouth, olive(s) or Gibson’s.
  
  👽
- Can’t beat a good gin and tonic on a hot summer’s day.
- I've always preferred a Tom Collins. Sweet instead of bitter.
- I used to love them.
  Then, 20 yo me decided to split a 26er into two glasses, top up with tonic and a twist of lemon. Waited til my buddy showed, put on some music and drank them in under 45 minutes. 30 minutes after that, we are standing in a snowstorm, in t-shirts (because we dont want to pay for coat check), outside a bar (we walked from our place), waiting in line to get in. An hour after that, we say fuck it, walk home, and proceed to have the worst spins, come downs, and hangovers of our lives. Needless to say, G&Ts are off the books for me forevermore.
  TL;DR 20 yo me destroyed G&T for all the mes to follow.
- Heck yeah. A good gin and tonic is most refreshing.
  I do that people who don’t like them either 1) hate juniper or 2) have had them made with shit tonic water. Get the good stuff and some decent gin and it’s just grand.
- Get you some tonic syrup and kick that gin & tonic game up to 11. So worth it!
  
  Do you have a recommendation? I've actually been looking so I can make my own tonic water.
- Mexican mule is usually my go to, but this gin mule has me intrigued. I must try it.

If you’re ok with bitter flavors, I’m a big fan of the Negroni.
I prefer mine straight up so it doesn’t dilute too much.
- I prefer its big sibling the Boulevardier.
  1.5 parts bourbon or rye
  1 part campari
  1 part sweet vermouth. I prefer Carpano Antica
  Express an orange peel over and garnish with it
  
  But if I have good rye I’m making a Manhattan so there’s a booze cherry as “dessert”.
- I'm normally a fan of bitter and other really strong flavors, but personally most negronis are just too much for me, lengthen it out with some prosecco to make it sbagliato though and it's a damn tasty drink.
- I love Negroni. It needs to be on the rocks tho. If you do it properly, it needs to be cold. Also in terms of quantity, no ice means a ton more alcohol, I prefer to drink 3 properly made if the goal is to get drunk.

Absolute favorite is the Sazerac. Any recipe you find use less sugar.
- Do you make yours with a split base of rye and cognac or do you go for straight rye? Love me a good Sazerac! If you haven't had one yet, give the bijou or la louisiane a try too. Both are delicious new orleans style cocktails
  
  I like it straight rye mostly but always love to try and see if a good bartender can make it 50/50 too.

Rye Manhattan up. Rye old fashioned if you want rocks and sweeter profile. But always rye.
- Straight rye can be good too.
  
  I do enjoy a good rye! But generally I enjoy bourbon neat/on the rocks or rye in cocktails.

The Dude was on to something, white russian all the way.

I dunno about favorite, but my go-tos are an Old Fashioned in the fall and winter, and a Tom Collins in spring and summer.
Those become a Manhattan or an Aviation if I’m feeling fancy or just want to mix it up.

I like tiki drinks.
Painkillers are incredible. I'll take 12.
measurements:
2 oz Dark Rum (preferably Pusser's Rum, as it's the traditional choice)
4 oz Pineapple Juice
1 oz Orange Juice
1 oz Cream of Coconut *Garnish: Grated Nutmeg and optionally a pineapple wedge or cherry
Instructions:
Combine Ingredients: In a shaker, add the dark rum, pineapple juice, orange juice, and cream of coconut with ice.
Shake Well: Shake vigorously until well chilled.
Strain: Strain the mixture into a hurricane glass or large snifter filled with ice.
Garnish: Generously grate fresh nutmeg on top of the drink and, if you like, add a pineapple wedge or cherry for decoration.
- I really like both the Jungle Bird and Artichoke Hold served on crushed ice as tiki drinks.
  The Jungle Bird
  1.5 oz Jamaican rum
  .75 oz Campari
  1 oz pineapple juice, preferably fresh
  .5 oz lime juice
  .5 oz Demerara syrup (1:1 sugar to water) Shake on ice and strain into crushed ice. Garnish: pineapple wedge and frond
  Artichoke Hold:
  0.75 oz Jamaican Rum preferably Smith & Cross
  0.75 oz Cynar
  0.5 oz Elderflower Liqueur preferably St Germain
  0.75 oz Lime Juice
  0.5 oz Orgeat
  Same as above, shake on ice and strain onto crushed ice.
  
  The jungle bird is one of the greatest. I typically use blackstrap rum. I've even clarified it before with milk

Mai Tai. All the joy of vacationing on a beach, without the beach.

Rarely drink cocktails, but Long Island Ice Tea is probably my go-to.
- That’s almost as dangerous (easily drinkable) as jungle juice.

Penicillin. Honey, bourbon, scotch, ginger, and lemon, all in one.
- This is my go to during cold months, though I usually see it made with scotch instead of bourbon.
  
  I prefer bourbon, haha. Not super traditional, but I tend to prefer bourbon over scotch, so other than the smokey top I like bourbon in mine. Doesn't make a huge difference overall!

The Last Word is my favorite, but I rarely have the ingredients on hand. The Bees Knees is a more common go-to.
- Naked & Famous is my favorite. It’s been described as the result of a Oaxacan love affair between The Last Word and a Paper Plane.

For a cocktail, I'll take a well executed Mojito 9/10 times. That other 1/10 is often a White Russian.
Else a gin & tonic as a long drink, as long as they got decent stuff.
These days I have maybe 2-3 drinks a year at most, so I'm not willing to settle for inferior ingredients.
- Well executed being the key here! I don't know how many Mojitos I've had with just 5 limp mint leaves barely muddled in them
  
  Yeah, or using syrups for lime, mint and even sugar. I've once received something that can only be described as a glass of sprite with a dash of toothpaste. Utterly repulsive.

Gin and Tonic is my go-to.
The one that catches people off guard, but people generally seem to enjoy once they try is dark rum and orange juice (but the OJ has to be good, the kind thats pulpy / thick).
- That's my reaction with a jager mule usually. Just a Moscow mule, sub the vodka for jagermeister. It sounds way too much, but the flavors of the ginger and the jager fit so well together, it's really more than the sum of its parts.

Is the sun up? Bloody Mary
Is the sun down? Extra dirty gin martini. Preferably Hendricks or Botanist.
- For me, an extra dirty bloody mary, which includes olive brine and pickle juice. A shot of each, or to taste. Lifts it into a new realm.

I'm sober now, but back when I drank I always loved a martini made with equal parts gin and sweet vermouth with a splash of grenadine and a maraschino cherry.

I like the sound of that. Needs to be bitter, otherwise I chug them !
I quite like salty margaritas and dirty martinis.
- If you want bitter use fresh grapefruit juice, the sodas have enough sugar for a sweet/tart balance I enjoy but fresh is a lot more "dry."
- Try a salt and pepper martini. They changed my mind about gin

Daytime: Caeser
Nighttime: Negroni or Manhattan
- Those are my go to as well, except bloody Mary, but similar to a Caesar.

I don't drink hard liquor any more, but even when I did, I didn't drink cocktails, but did get a tiny bit fancy on straight whiskey.
Rye, mid or top shelf. Chilled glass with a whiskey stone. Sometimes with a beer.

I have multiple - it depends on the occasion:
illegal (I love mezcal)
moscow mule
bloody mary
piña colada
- Piña coladas are fucking king.
  
  I think bacardi sells a mixer for pina coladas that is frozen like orange juice in those can things. Put that with the liquor in your blender.
  https://starfishmarket.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Bacardi-Mixers-Pi%C3%B1a-Colada-10-OZ.jpg
  
  I have a friend who makes his own piña colada. He always makes way too much of it, so occasionally the odd bottle ends up in my liquor cabinet. I am normally not too much into sweet drinks, but I absolutely love that stuff.

An Old Pal - which is a minor variation of a Boulevardier
1 ounce Rye
1 ounce Campari
1 ounce dry Vermouth
Served straight up garnished with a twist of lemon
If I can find it, Time Release is fantastic and should be on everyone's must try list
1.5 ounces Dry Gin
1 ounce White Port
0.5 ounce Sloe Gin
0.25 ounce Yellow Chartreuse
Stirred not shaken, served straight up, garnished with a cherry
Great sipper that changes in flavor significantly as it warms up. Most places don't have White Port on hand and few have Sloe Gin on hand so can be difficult to get at a bar.

Replace the Grapefruit from your Paloma with some Japaleno brine and it's my current go to

Caipiroska, a Caipirinha variant with Vodka instead of cachaça
https://iba-world.com/caipirinha/

Dark, unspiced rum and any of the fruit juice monsters mixed 1:1 in a big gulp.
Keeps my heart on it's toes.

Old Fashioned, when the bar is stocked enough and the barman knows, then Smoke & Cigars

Division Bell! It's punchy and tart with the citrus and slightly bitter aperol, and the mezcal gives a really welcome smoky flavor. I add just a quarter oz simple to the standard recipe, otherwise I find it a little dry.
-1 ounce mezcal -3/4 ounce Aperol -1/4 ounce Luxardo maraschino liqueur -3/4 ounce lime juice, freshly squeezed -1/4 ounce simple syrup
-Add ingredients to a shaker with ice, shake well before straining into a coupe and garnishing with a grapefruit twist
- Yes, it needs simple otherwise is too dry

Amoretto sour or gin gin
- By far, Negroni.
  1/3 dark vermouth 1/3 Campari 1/3 gin
  Add to a low and wide glass with a fair amount of ice. Smoked rosemary and orange peel for extra infusion of flavour and stir.
  You can experiment with the brands and types of vermouth and gin but Campari stays.
  
  My house does a lot of Negroni variations. I will often swap the Campari for Ramazzotti or Cappelletti to dial down the bitterness and add some herbal notes. Also works great as a Boulevardier or with mezcal.
  
  You can have my bottle of campari, I LOVE gin but a Negroni? Nah, that shit is like drinking cough medicine from the 1800s sans heroin.
  
  Replace the gin with bourbon and it becomes a boulivardier! That’s one of my favorites.
  
  Scrolled way to far to find my absolute favourite drink. +1

If I have to pick one drink to take to a desert island, it's the classic Sazerac.
That is what I will want most of the time when I want a cocktail. However, I will allow a few others to enter rotation, depending on mood, time/temperature, and place:
Margarita.
Vesper.
Pastis.
And, finally, my embarrassing guilty pleasure (which I never order except when I am in company I know well or I am on a Caribbean island): piña colada.

Negronis, I love campari and gin
I also love coming up with cocktails so I'd love to share one of my favorites, the Fire Eater
Dried whole chili peppers, broken in half
Fireball
Maraschino cherries and syrup
Fill with coke and serve over ice, alternatively use cherry coke
The drink gets spicier as you drink. For the full fire eater experience eat the chilis at the end.

Painkiller, which is piña colada for grown-ups
Whiskey Sour, skip the egg
Classic Daiquiri (not the slush one)

I'm a big fan of a Malt Neat.
The ingredients are:
-3oz Islay malt
That's it! It's so easy and simple, and it's impossible to mess up!

A Right Hand.
You have to make it yourself though because unfortunately no one knows what the hell this delicious drink is.

A white russian or a raspberry or mango mojito

I'm partial to the New Orleans cocktails. If I'm making a Sazerac, I like this variation.
On the whole, though, my favorite has to be the Vieux Carré
3/4 oz rye
3/4 oz cognac
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
1/3 oz Bénédictine D.O.M
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
1 dash Angostura bitters
Optional absinthe rinse (I usually keep some absinthe in an atomizer because I refuse to throw out perfectly good absinthe)
Serve in a rocks glass with a lemon twist
At the same time, though, my love for bitter sometimes draws me to a Bonsoni:
2 oz Carpano Antica vermouth
1/2 oz Fernet Branca

Sazerac - basically a Louisiana old fashioned
2 oz Rye whiskey
1/4 oz dark simple syrup ( like Turbinado, Demerara, etc)
5ish dashes of Peychaud’s bitters
rinse glass with absinthe (I swear it doesn’t taste like anise/licorice at all in the end)
lemon twist
serve straight up

Salmiakki, keep it classic.
- Oh look it's a Finn. The premade salmiakkikossu or home made turkinpippuri infusion?
  
  Koskenkorva, I haven't tried steeping my own.

Other than cheap domestic beer when im trying to get drunk, I stick to Old-fashions. Great drink to sip as the liquor slowly mixes with the water from the melting ice, smoothing out the flavors.
1.5 ounce whisky
.5 ounce of simple syrup (I like mine extra sweet)
A couple dashes of Angostura bitters
1 fat chunk of ice
(Basil Hayden is my bourbon of choice)
- Agreed on Old Fashioneds. We make them with bourbon, sometimes rye to change it up, and throw in some orange bitters
  
  I'll twist an orange peel over my bourbon to get some of the oils! My buddy does the same with lemon peel and rye
- I like a Canadian Old Fashioned.
  Bourbon
  Maple syrup
  Angostura bitters
  Ice
  Orange peel if you have them

Caipirinha. Made with cachaça, sugar, and lime. The drink is prepared by pounding the fruit and the sugar together, then adding the liquor.

I quit drinking a while ago, but before I did I was exploring quite a few different things. Kind of amazing how much different alcohol there is.
Some highlights:
Belgian beers. Trappist stand out in this field but it is very difficult to go wrong. This encompasses very high quality beers (best in the world, IMHO) of dizzying variety. Sour (NOT bitter like an IPA...SOUR), fruit beers (lambic), wheat, doubles, triples, reds, browns, and more. Here is a nice guide.
Rye whiskey. several varieties exist and most of them very unique tasting. Search enough and you'll find some very unusual ones.
Vodka martinis. The drunk's drink.
Sipping tequila. Costco had some sort of house brand that was amazing. I only recommend agave but there are less good varieties.
Bloody Marys. Some places make these with so much food in them they could be a meal. I like spicy.
Ouzo chased by Coke is an amazing taste. Try it sometime if you never have.
Pepper vodka. I had some I bought in Ukraine (years ago) that was amazing. Pepper meaning spicy pepper not black pepper. Do not buy the absolut version it is shit.
- No shit that Kirkland brand añejo is absolutely a good sipper!
  
  That's the stuff! Cheap and fucking amazing taste.

Anything spicy or peppery. I'm pretty basic. Jalapeños are enough, but if you're creative about it, so much the better.
- Ive been adding Jalapenos to margaritas and using tajin for the glass rim. Very nice change.

Black Russian is my thing most of the time. Also gin sour without egg is great.

I don't do cocktails much, mostly because I don't really have the ingredients around. One I like to do now and then is whisky (around half the drink, preferably spicy rye) and the rest about equal proportions of apple juice and ginger ale, poured over a chunk of ice.

Monte Carlo
1.5oz Bourbon, 0.5 Benedictine, 2 dashes Angostura

Dark & Stormy is my favorite, from what I've tried

I normally like my liquor with just a splash of water, but I do make a mean mojito. The secret, which I discovered by accident, is adding a bit of catnip along with the mint. It has a smoother minty flavor which compliments the lime juice really well
Also, catnip tea is commonly used to help people sleep, so you get nice and relaxed without drinking too much.
- I would like to know how you found out about the cat nip thing by accident.
  
  My catnip and mint grow next to each other and I harvested some by mistake, then got curious about what it would taste like.
  
  I have both of these, dry, in jars next to each other. If they weren't labeled I'd have to smell and maybe even taste to tell them apart. Fresh they look similar with smallish deeply textured leaves.

All time favorite: Jungle Bird. The perfect mix of tiki drink in spirit but with a punch and grown up flavors!
Also love me a Bee's Knees with some high quality gin and honey. There's a fantastic New England distillery called Barr Hill that makes gin from honey, which makes for an extra amazing one.
I've really been enjoying the "Sour" format lately, too. Very versatile with all the random liquors or lower-proof alcohols I've collected over the past few years making random drinks.

Visit us at !cocktails@lemmy.world
I love a Paloma and agree, Jarritos and fresh lime, absolutely.
My current favorite is an adjusted Paper Plane
2 parts bourbon
1 part Aperol
1 part Amaro Nonino
1 part fresh lemon juice
Shaken with ice, served up.
- Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !cocktails@lemmy.world

Personally a fan of the Sonic Screwdriver, because I like my drinks like I like my ladies: sweet, bubbly, geeky as hell, and able to knock my ass out.
2 parts Sprite
2 parts orange juice
1 part vanilla vodka
1 part Blue Curaçao
Combine and serve in a highball glass on the rocks.

Well,

Scotch and soda.

Lots of good cocktails in here. Going to plug !cocktails@lemmy.world for everyone to check out and contribute these cocktails, too.

I've invited one based on my taste for palomas and pisco sour. El Condor:
1oz of Tequila or Mezcal
1oz of Pisco (Peruvian)
0.5oz Syrup Agave (you can find it in the muesli section) or simple syrup
2oz Lime juice
2oz grapefruit juice
1 Eggwhite to shake if you like it more smooth
chili salt rim or chilistring garnish
Probably the best cocktail I did so far.

Gimlets with homemade lime cordial if I'm trying to get hammered. Alternatively: death in the afternoon to black out
Dark n stormy with lemon hart 151 and a couple dashes of ango if I'm feeling lazy
Old fashioneds with a nice barrel proof bourbon to unwind
Amaretto sour for something sweet
Vieux carre if I want vermouth
There's a whole wide world of fancy booze out there, I couldn't pick just one favorite lol

It always changes on the day but couple of my favourites are
-corpse reviver No. 2 -absinthe sour -pina colada -bloody mary( with gin instead of vodka and homemade chili sauce instead of tabasco)
- I am also here to rep Corpse Recover No. 2.
  It's very refreshing. Gin, lemon juice, lillet, cointreaux, and a touch of absinthe.