Easy As One, Two, Three: Your Guide to No Math Cocktails

I recently had an epiphany. A customer asked how he could easily increase the number of cocktails in his home bar repertoire but still genuinely wow his friends. I started to write out a list of my favorite recipes and quickly noticed a pattern emerging. It hit me: all the drinks I make on a regular basis, at least the way I make them, use absolutely no fractions. Not necessarily equal parts but whole parts. Keeping things simple allows me to whip up stylish drinks without a lot of fuss.

Call it lazy, call it math-phobic, but don’t call it boring. These are classic you can easily serve with a little flair! This kind of cocktail is easy to remember (part of why I make them so often), easy to batch (I rarely make one person a drink at a time), and easy to put your own twist on (I’ll show you some of my favorite variations below).

You don’t even have to think in ounces. Just think in parts! Make that part bigger if you’re making more than one drink at a time. Squeezing citrus? Juice your lime first and there, you’ve got your part.

The resulting list of recipes scrawled out in Sharpie on a sheet of Bitters + Bottles signature brown paper looked a bit like a football playsheet. I knew this customer was going to go home with his cocktail game effortlessly upgraded.

Here are the drinks I make over and over again. No fractions but plenty of fabulous.

Pineapple Daiquiri

This is my favorite variation of a Daiquiri but try the 2-1-1 ratio with different rums and different sweet elements to make it your own!

2 parts Plantation’s Stiggin’s Fancy Pineapple Rum
1 part Passion Fruit Syrup
1 part freshly squeezed lime juice

Shake with ice, strain, and serve up.

Order as a kit here!

Pamplemousse Margarita

Who wants to fuss with putting salt on the rim of the glass? Put a pinch right into the shaker! My swapping in grapefruit liqueur instead of orange turns it into a Margarita/Paloma mash-up.

2 parts Tequila Blanco (Arette goes well with my no nonsense style.)
1 part Combier’s Pamplemousse Liqueur
1 part freshly squeezed lime juice
Pinch of salt

Shake with ice, strain, and serve over fresh ice.

Manhattan

I keep things pretty classic here. A few dashes of bitters don’t count as a fraction because you don’t have to measure them! You don’t have to get too fancy of a Rye but get the good cherries.

2 parts Rye (Old Overholt Bonded seen here)
1 part Carpano Antica Formula Sweet Vermouth
2-3 dashes of bitters (One of my favorites is Miracle Mile Sour Cherry)

Stir with ice, strain, and serve up. Garnish with a cocktail cherry.

Buy our Manhattan kit here!

Negroni

It’s so easy you can even just pour the ingredients into your glass of ice. Want to see me ridiculously happy? Pour this over one large, clear ice cube.

1 part Four Pillars Rare Dry Gin
1 part Campari
1 part Cocchi Vermouth di Torino

Stir with ice, strain, and serve over fresh ice OR build in the glass on ice. Garnish with an orange twist.

See my favorite Negroni ingredients as a kit here!

The Last Word

Four big flavors come together and balance each other out. Some people serve this with a cocktail cherry but it really doesn’t need it, we're keeping things simple! There are too many variations of this drink to list here but I’ll throw one in as a bonus below.

1 part Gin
1 part Green Chartreuse
1 part Maraschino Liqueur
1 part freshly squeezed lime juice

Shake with ice, strain, and serve up.

Buy as a kit here!

Naked & Famous

My secret shame as a cocktail nerd was that I didn’t like smokey spirits. It makes sense that a drink with whole parts could convince me otherwise. Not too smokey, not too bitter, the best of all worlds.

1 part Mezcal (Montelobos seen here)
1 part Yellow Chartreuse
1 part Aperol
1 part freshly squeezed lime juice

Shake with ice, strain, and serve up.