Screwdriver
Vodka and orange juice, built over ice — about as simple as a cocktail gets, and no less good for it.
- Difficulty
- easy
- Prep time
- 3 min
- Strength
- 9% ABV
- Glassware
- Highball glass
- Base
- vodka
- Serves
- 1
Method
- Fill a highball glass with ice.
- Add the vodka.
- Top with fresh orange juice.
- Stir gently to combine.
- Garnish with an orange slice.
Equipment
Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.
Jigger
Household swap: A tablespoon measure (1 tbsp ≈ 15ml).
Bar spoon
Household swap: A long-handled kitchen spoon or chopstick.
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 Orange Juice
Best substitute: Grapefruit Juice
This is the lengthener in this drink.
Flavour impact: Produces a sharper, more bitter drink closer to a Salty Dog than a Screwdriver.
What changes
Grapefruit Juice moves the drink a long way — less sweetness, more acidity, more bitterness and more intensity. 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.
- Acidity ↑
- More acidity makes the drink taste fresher and drier, and can push a balanced sour over into sharp.
- Bitterness ↑
- Bitterness builds across a drink rather than announcing itself, so this will read as a longer, drier finish.
- Intensity ↑
- A more intensely flavoured ingredient will start to dominate the components around it.
- Character
- you lose sweet, fruity, mellow and juicy, and you gain tart, bitter-edged, refreshing and citrusy. 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.
- Use slightly less of it, or add a touch more sweetener to hold the balance.
- Pour slightly less, or lengthen the drink a little, and let the sweetness catch up.
- Scale it back by a third and let the other ingredients hold their share.
Moderate confidenceA recognised riff, though it changes the drink's fundamental sweetness.Makes a different drinkBecomes a variation
Make it better
- Freshly squeezed orange juice makes a bigger difference here than in almost any other cocktail — it's one of only two ingredients.
- Use a good, full-bodied vodka; its character is more noticeable than you'd expect against the orange juice.
- Serve very cold, with plenty of ice, since there's nothing else in the drink to keep it refreshing.
- 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 sweet
- Use less orange juice relative to vodka, or use a more tart, freshly squeezed juice rather than a sweetened carton.
- Tastes weak
- Use fewer, larger ice cubes so it dilutes more slowly, or increase the vodka slightly.
- Orange juice separates or looks watery
- Stir gently just before serving — fresh juice can settle if the drink sits for a while.
- Feels flat or one-dimensional
- A float of Galliano on top turns this into a Harvey Wallbanger, with much more aromatic complexity.
- 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.
Make ahead & storage
Batch the base, finish at serving
Batch the base days ahead and add fresh orange juice when you pour.
- Fresh orange juice:
- Fresh citrus loses its aroma within hours and turns dull. Squeeze it on the day.
What it tastes like
The taste, and what drives it
sweet, gentle, very light — a long and lengthened drink served long, over ice.
Sweet
Dry → Sweet
Openly sweet, and balanced by something else rather than hidden.
What drives it: Fresh orange juice — carries the most sugar into the glass.
Gentle
Soft → Sharp
A trace of acidity, there to lift rather than to be noticed.
What drives it: Fresh orange 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: Fresh orange juice — adds most of the weight.
Moderate
Delicate → Bold
Moderate: assertive enough to hold its own, mild enough for a second.
What drives it: Vodka — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.
What you smell first
- Citrus peelLeads
From Fresh orange juice, Orange slice
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
- Fresh orange juice 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 fresh orange juice by about a third and rebuild. If it is already made, a squeeze of citrus is faster than starting again.
- What that does
- It will taste drier and slightly thinner — sugar carries body as well as sweetness, so you lose a little weight along with it.
It tastes weak
- Likely cause
- Usually dilution rather than measurement: building in the glass adds water as it chills, and wet or small ice adds far more of it than cold, large ice does.
- What to change
- Use larger, colder ice and work faster. Adding more spirit fixes the symptom and unbalances everything else.
- What that does
- The drink gains definition without gaining sugar. It will also read as slightly sharper, which is what 'more presence' usually means in practice.
It doesn't smell of anything
- Likely cause
- This drink's aroma comes from citrus peel, 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.
It tastes one-dimensional
- Likely cause
- With 2 components there is nowhere for complexity to hide — a long and lengthened drink is exposed by design, so a dull one is usually a dull ingredient rather than a missing step.
- What to change
- Change the quality of what is there before adding anything new: fresh citrus rather than bottled, a better base bottle, a dash of bitters. Bitters add layers at a scale nothing else matches.
- What that does
- More going on at the same strength and sweetness. Adding a whole extra ingredient instead usually produces a muddier drink rather than a deeper one.
Taste profile
- Sweetness
- 3/5
- Sourness
- 1/5
- Bitterness
- 0/5
- Strength
- 2/5
- Fruitiness
- 4/5
- Freshness
- 3/5
- Creaminess
- 0/5
- Smokiness
- 0/5
Nutrition & alcohol
Estimate onlyBased on a standard 50ml vodka pour topped with fresh orange juice.- Calories
- 178 kcal
- Sugar
- 17 g
- Carbohydrates
- 20 g
- Alcohol units (UK)
- 2
- US standard drinks
- 1.12
- ABV
- 9%
- Serving size
- 220 ml
Show calculation assumptions
Source: Calculated from standard measures
Calorie breakdown: ~109 kcal from alcohol, ~69 kcal from sugar and mixers.
Likely range: 134–223 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.
Assumes vodka at 40% ABV and a 150ml orange juice top.
These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.
Variations
Harvey Wallbanger
Float 15ml of Galliano on top for a herbal, aromatic riff on the same base.
Fuzzy Navel Screwdriver
Add 15ml of peach liqueur for a fruitier, sweeter version.
What kind of drink this is
The structure behind the recipe
A built build: a long and lengthened vodka-based drink, served long, over ice — clean in the mouth.
Long and lengthened
A short measure stretched with a mixer or juice — the drink's length, not its concentration, is the point of it.
Base
Vodka
Lengthener
Fresh orange juice
Drinks built this way are collected as the Highball family.
Technique
built
Components are poured into the serving glass over ice and stirred once, or not at all. Dilution happens while you drink rather than before.
The drink changes as you go: strongest at the first sip, longest and most diluted at the last. That drift is a feature of a long drink and a fault in a short one.
What it ruins: Nothing, but it cannot properly combine anything viscous — a syrup poured last will sit at the bottom.
Everything about building in the glass →How the technique works →Dilution
In the glass, as you drink
Water from ice typically makes up around 15% of the finished drink for a built build (commonly 10–20%). Dilution is an ingredient here, not a side effect.
Why dilution is an ingredient →Served
Long, over ice
Highball glass · 220ml
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
Nothing here thickens or aerates the drink — it is as light in the mouth as the liquid itself.
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.
Where it comes from
Origin and family
Origin of the Screwdriver
American in origin, popularised in the mid-20th century; the name reputedly comes from oil rig workers stirring their drink with a screwdriver for lack of a spoon.
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
Sex on the Beach
You may like this because it's part of the same highball family as the Screwdriver.
Tequila Sunrise
You may like this because it shares a fruity-forward profile with the Screwdriver, but uses tequila instead of vodka.
- Chambord Royale
Chambord Royale
You may like this because it shares a sweet-forward profile with the Screwdriver, but uses sparkling-wine instead of vodka.
Questions people ask
- What's a Harvey Wallbanger?
- A real variation listed above — the same vodka-and-orange-juice base with a Galliano float on top for extra herbal sweetness.
- Orange juice substitute?
- See the substitution guidance above — grapefruit juice works and shifts the drink closer to a Greyhound in character.
- Mine tastes watery — why?
- See "Rescue this drink" above — with only two ingredients, a Screwdriver has nowhere to hide over-diluted or low-quality orange juice.
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
An extremely simple, consistently documented two-ingredient formula.