Long Island Iced Tea
Five spirits, citrus and a splash of cola — deceptively smooth for how strong it actually is.
- Difficulty
- medium
- Prep time
- 6 min
- Strength
- 9.5% ABV
- Glassware
- Highball glass
- Base
- vodka
- Serves
- 1
Ingredients
- Vodka15ml
- Gin15ml
- White rum15ml
- Tequila blanco15ml
- Triple sec15ml
- Fresh lemon juice25ml
- Simple syrup15ml
- Cola60ml
Added after shaking, not shaken
Garnish: Lemon wedge
Method
- Add the vodka, gin, white rum, tequila, triple sec, lemon juice and simple syrup to a shaker with ice.
- Shake hard for 10–15 seconds until well chilled.
- Strain into a highball glass filled with fresh ice.
- Top with cola and stir once, gently, to combine — do not shake the cola.
- Garnish with a lemon wedge.
Equipment
Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.
Cocktail shaker
Household swap: A jar with a very tight lid works for the spirit-and-citrus shake — just never shake the cola in it.
Jigger
Household swap: A tablespoon measure (1 tbsp ≈ 15ml) works well for the small, equal pours this recipe needs.
Missing an ingredient?
Each swap below says what it changes and how to correct for it, so you can decide whether you are making this drink or a neighbouring one.
Instead of Cola
Best substitute: Iced Tea
This is the lengthener in this drink.
Flavour impact: Produces a lighter-bodied, less sweet drink closer to the name's literal suggestion.
What changes
Iced Tea moves the drink a long way — less sweetness, more bitterness and less texture. This is worth making deliberately rather than as a stand-in.
- Sweetness ↓
- Less sweetness leaves the acid and the spirit more exposed, so the drink will taste sharper and drier than it should.
- Bitterness ↑
- Bitterness builds across a drink rather than announcing itself, so this will read as a longer, drier finish.
- Texture ↓
- The drink loses its fizz, and with it the lift that was carrying the aromatics — it will read as flatter and sweeter.
- Character
- you lose sweet, caramel, fizzy and spiced, and you gain tannic, light, refreshing and mildly bitter. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.
To correct for it
- Add a little more syrup, a small amount at a time, until the edges come back together.
- Pour slightly less, or lengthen the drink a little, and let the sweetness catch up.
- Serve it colder and consider a touch more acidity to replace the lift the bubbles were providing.
Moderate confidenceA known variation, though cola is by far the standard choice.Makes a different drinkBecomes a variation
Make it better
- Never shake the cola — a sealed shaker full of carbonated liquid builds pressure fast and can pop open or spray when opened. Always add it after straining.
- Measure each spirit carefully; five small pours add up quickly, and it's easy to over-pour without noticing.
- Use a good cola, not diet, for the classic colour and mouthfeel — diet cola makes the drink taste thinner.
- Use freshly squeezed citrus juice rather than bottled — the aromatic oils fade fast once juiced, so squeeze just before making the drink.
- Adjust sweetness gradually and taste as you go — it's easy to add more syrup, impossible to take it out.
Rescue this drink
- Tastes too strong or harsh
- Double-check your pours — with five spirits, small measuring errors add up fast. Use a jigger, not a free pour.
- Too sweet
- Cut the simple syrup to 10ml and add a touch more lemon juice.
- Goes flat quickly
- Add the cola last and serve immediately; it loses fizz fast once combined with the acidic citrus mix.
- Tastes like straight alcohol
- Top with a little more cola to balance — this drink relies on the cola to round out five separate spirits.
- It foams over when the mixer goes ingeneral guidance
- Something in the glass is nucleating the carbonation — usually fresh ice with frost on it, or a sugary residue on the side. Pour the mixer slowly down the inside of the glass onto a spoon rather than onto the ice, and add it last. A drink built the other way round loses most of its fizz before it reaches the table.
- Too sourgeneral guidance
- Add a little more sweetener (simple syrup or the cocktail's usual sweetening ingredient), a small amount at a time.
- Served too warmgeneral guidance
- Chill the glass, ice and every ingredient ahead of time — a warm pour is the fastest way to lose a cold drink's balance. For one serving, there's no real fix beyond rebuilding it properly chilled; for a batch, keep everything refrigerated until the moment of serving and add ice last.
- Over-diluted (tastes watery)general guidance
- Likely shaken too long, or with too much ice surface area. For one serving there's no fixing it after the fact — rebuild with fewer, larger ice cubes and a shorter shake. Planning a batch? Shorten the ice-contact time across the whole round, not just this glass.
- No cocktail shakergeneral guidance
- A jar with a very tight lid works for the spirit-and-citrus shake — just never shake the cola in it.
- Missing the garnishgeneral guidance
- No lemon wedge? A lime wedge works just as well.
Make ahead & storage
Batch the base, finish at serving
Batch the 6 stable components days ahead and add fresh lemon juice and cola when you pour.
Add about 27% water to the batch to replace what the ice would otherwise contribute, or it will pour noticeably harsher than a fresh one.
- Fresh lemon juice:
- Fresh citrus loses its aroma within hours and turns dull. Squeeze it on the day.
- Cola:
- Carbonated — it goes flat in a bottle, and there is no way to put the fizz back.
What it tastes like
The taste, and what drives it
sweet, sharp, very light, sparkling — a sour-structured drink served long, over ice.
Sweet
Dry → Sweet
Openly sweet, and balanced by something else rather than hidden.
What drives it: Simple syrup — carries the most sugar into the glass.
Sharp
Soft → Sharp
Properly sharp. This is the axis the drink is built on.
What drives it: Fresh lemon juice — supplies the acidity.
Very light
Light → Rich
Almost weightless in the mouth — closer to a long soft drink than to a sipper.
What drives it: Tequila blanco — adds most of the weight.
Sparkling
Still → Sparkling
Carbonated, which lifts the aromatics and makes the drink taste drier than its sugar content alone would suggest.
What drives it: Cola — carries the carbonation.
Very bold
Delicate → Bold
Very bold — concentrated, and served small for that reason.
What drives it: Vodka — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.
What you smell first
- Citrus peelLeads
From Gin, Triple sec, Fresh lemon juice, Lemon wedge
- Caramel and molasses
From White rum, Cola
- Baking spice
From Cola
- Juniper and botanicals
From Gin
Every aroma here comes from the liquid itself; nothing is layered on top.
How it was worked out
Each reading comes from the recipe's own recorded taste scores combined with what each ingredient contributes, weighted by how much of it is in the glass. Almost everything in this drink has detailed ingredient data behind it.
How balance actually works →If it isn't right
What goes wrong with this drink, and why
Only the faults this particular recipe is actually prone to — each with the likely cause, the adjustment, and what the adjustment costs you.
It's too sweet
- Likely cause
- Simple syrup is carrying the sugar here, and it is the easiest thing in the drink to over-pour — syrup clings to a jigger and a "splash" is rarely the same twice.
- What to change
- Cut simple syrup by about a third and rebuild. If it is already made, a squeeze of citrus is faster than starting again.
- What that does
- The drink will read sharper as well as less sweet, because the acid stops being balanced. That is usually the intention, but it is a bigger change than it sounds.
It's too sour
- Likely cause
- Fresh lemon juice varies more than any other ingredient in the drink. Limes differ by weeks of ripeness, and a sharp one can be half again as acidic as a mild one at the same measure.
- What to change
- Add sweetener a few millilitres at a time rather than diluting — you are correcting a ratio, not a concentration.
- What that does
- Sourness recedes and the drink gains a little weight. Overshoot and you will be reading the too-sweet entry above instead.
It's too strong
- Likely cause
- Vodka dominates by design here — this is a drink built to be sipped, and it is under-diluted more often than it is over-poured.
- What to change
- Shaking for longer, or add a measured 5–10ml of water. Both are the same correction; one is just more honest about it.
- What that does
- Alcohol heat drops and the aromatics open up — a slightly diluted spirit-forward drink usually smells better, not worse.
It's gone flat
- Likely cause
- Cola loses gas to warmth, to agitation and to anything it can nucleate against — pulp, sugar crystals, a dry glass.
- What to change
- Chill the mixer properly, add it last, pour it against the inside wall of the glass, and stir once at most.
- What that does
- The bubbles last, which also makes the drink taste drier — carbonation contributes a real acidity of its own on top of the lift.
It's watery
- Likely cause
- Shaking adds water while it chills, and the two cannot be separated. Wet ice from a freezer door, or small cubes, will over-dilute before the drink is properly cold.
- What to change
- Use bigger, drier, colder ice and stop sooner. Chilling the glass first buys you time you would otherwise spend diluting.
- What that does
- More flavour concentration at the same temperature. Under-dilute instead and the drink will taste harsh — this is a target, not a direction.
It doesn't smell of anything
- Likely cause
- This drink's aroma comes from citrus peel and caramel and molasses, carried in the liquid. Serving it too cold suppresses that: volatile compounds do not leave a very cold drink.
- What to change
- Let it sit for a minute before drinking, and use a glass that narrows towards the rim to concentrate what does escape.
- What that does
- More of the aroma escapes and the drink reads as more intense. The cost is temperature: a drink left to warm also dilutes faster, so this is a trade against how long it stays right.
Taste profile
- Sweetness
- 3/5
- Sourness
- 3/5
- Bitterness
- 0/5
- Strength
- 5/5
- Fruitiness
- 1/5
- Freshness
- 2/5
- Creaminess
- 0/5
- Smokiness
- 0/5
Nutrition & alcohol
Estimate onlyFive separate spirit pours mean small measuring variation has an outsized effect on both ABV and calories.- Calories
- 237 kcal
- Sugar
- 20 g
- Carbohydrates
- 24 g
- Alcohol units (UK)
- 2.9
- US standard drinks
- 1.61
- ABV
- 9.5%
- Serving size
- 300 ml
Show calculation assumptions
Source: Calculated from standard measures
Calorie breakdown: ~157 kcal from alcohol, ~80 kcal from sugar and mixers.
Likely range: 178–296 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.
Based on 15ml each of vodka, gin, white rum and tequila (all 40% ABV), 15ml triple sec at 30% ABV, plus citrus, syrup and a 60ml cola top.
These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.
Variations
Long Beach Iced Tea
Replace the cola with cranberry juice for a pink, fruitier version.
What kind of drink this is
The structure behind the recipe
A shaken build: a sour-structured vodka-based drink, served long, over ice — sparkling in the mouth.
Sour-structured
Something sour and something sweet held in balance over a base — the structure behind the whole sour family and everything descended from it.
Base
Vodka
Spirit in the largest measure — read as the base.
Modifier
Gin
A spirit, but not the largest measure — read as a modifier.
White rum
A spirit, but not the largest measure — read as a modifier.
Tequila blanco
A spirit, but not the largest measure — read as a modifier.
Triple sec
Liqueurs modify: they flavour and usually sweeten at the same time.
Sour element
Fresh lemon juice
A short, sharp measure — recorded acidity 5/5, and nothing sharper is poured short, so this is the sour element.
Sweet element
Simple syrup
A syrup — its whole job in the drink is to sweeten and to add a little body along with it.
Lengthener
Cola
A long measure of mixer — this is what makes the drink long.
Drinks built this way are collected as the Highball family.
8 components' roles areworked out from the ingredient's category and recorded taste attributes rather than set by hand — the reasoning is shown above so you can disagree with it.
Technique
shaken
Ice is thrown against the liquid and against itself, chipping fragments off and driving air through the mix. Chilling, dilution and aeration all happen at once and cannot be separated.
A lighter, briefly frothy body and a cloudy appearance that settles as it stands. The aeration blunts alcoholic heat, which is why a shaken drink tastes softer than a stirred one of the same strength.
What it ruins: Clarity, and any carbonation. A shaken spirits-only drink arrives cloudy with ice shards floating in it, and shaking anything fizzy is the one rule with no exceptions.
Everything about shaking →How the technique works →Dilution
During mixing, then strained
Water from ice typically makes up around 30% of the finished drink for a shaken build (commonly 25–35%). Dilution is an ingredient here, not a side effect.
Why dilution is an ingredient →Served
Long, over ice
Highball glass · 300ml
Served on ice, so it keeps chilling in the glass. A larger, colder, slower drink than the same spirits served straight up.
Texture and aroma
Carbonation lifts aromatics and adds a slight acidity of its own, which is why a long drink can taste drier than its sugar content suggests.
No dedicated aromatic component — what you smell is the spirit itself, which is a deliberate choice in a drink this spare.
Where to go from here
Each of these is here because of something specific about this drink, not as a standard set of links.
Drinking this with food: a digestif, properly
On its recorded taste scores this drink meets the test for a digestif, properly — the page explains the principle behind it rather than simply asserting the pairing.
Understanding why drinks work
Once you can make this, the intermediate path is where recipes stop being things to memorise.
Where this fits in a home bar
Gin is bottle 1 in the order that unlocks the most drinks — buying it opens up 10 recipes beyond the ones before it.
Where it comes from
Origin and family
Origin of the Long Island Iced Tea
American cocktail widely attributed to 1970s upstate New York, though its exact origin is debated.
On drinks history
Cocktail origin stories are frequently repeated and rarely evidenced. Our history section separates what is documented from what is folklore rather than picking whichever version reads best.
History and culture →Try this next
- Gold Rush
Gold Rush
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- Caipirinha
Caipirinha
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Whiskey Sour
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Use up your ingredients
Bought a bottle just for this? Here's what else it's good for.
Related tools
Scale this for a party
Work out bottles, mixers, ice and total alcohol units for any number of guests.
Recipe confidence
Widely known format, but exact spirit ratios vary considerably between bars.