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Snakebite

Equal parts lager and cider, built together — a straightforward, hard-hitting British pub pint.

Difficulty
easy
Prep time
3 min
Strength
4.8% ABV
Glassware
Pint glass
Base
beer
Serves
1

Ingredients

  • Pale lager
    250ml
  • Dry cider
    250ml
  • Blackcurrant cordialoptional

    For a 'snakebite and black' — omit for the plain version

    10ml
Scale for a party

Method

  1. Chill a pint glass along with the lager and cider.
  2. If making it 'black', pour the blackcurrant cordial into the base of the glass first.
  3. Pour the lager in slowly, tilting the glass to control the head.
  4. Top gently with the cider, pouring down the side rather than into the middle.
  5. Give one light stir at most — this drink is meant to stay lively.

Equipment

Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.

  • Jigger

    Household swap: Not needed — split the glass roughly in half by eye.

  • Bar spoon

    Household swap: A single gentle swirl with a regular spoon is enough.

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 Cider

    Best substitute: Stout

    This is the modifier in this drink.

    Flavour impact: Swapping in stout instead of cider gives a completely different, darker, roastier drink — really its own thing rather than a snakebite variant.

    What changes

    Stout moves the drink a long way — less acidity, more bitterness and more intensity. This is worth making deliberately rather than as a stand-in.

    Acidity ↓
    Less acidity is the change people notice most and diagnose least — the drink goes flat and slightly cloying rather than obviously wrong.
    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 appley, crisp, lightly fizzy and tart-sweet, and you gain roasted, malty, creamy and dark. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.

    To correct for it

    • Add a little more of it, or a squeeze of fresh citrus, until the drink lifts again.
    • 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 confidenceNot a traditional substitution, but a commonly requested one at bars.Makes a different drinkBecomes a variation

Make it better

  • Pour both components slowly and down the side of a tilted glass — combining two fizzy drinks quickly creates an enormous, wasteful head.
  • Use a dry, crisp cider rather than a sweet one; a sweet cider makes the whole drink cloying.
  • Serve very cold — this drink has no seasoning or garnish to fall back on if it's served lukewarm.

Rescue this drink

Foams over the top of the glass
Pour much more slowly next time, down the side of a tilted glass, and let the head settle between pours.
Tastes too sweet
Leave out the blackcurrant cordial and stick to the plain lager-and-cider build.
Goes flat fast
Make sure both drinks are properly chilled before combining — warm carbonated drinks lose fizz almost immediately when mixed.
Too weak or waterygeneral guidance
Add a splash more of the base spirit rather than extra mixer. For stirred or built drinks, over-dilution from ice is the usual cause — try a shorter stir or fewer, larger ice cubes.
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 0 stable components days ahead and add pale lager and dry cider when you pour.

Pale lager:
Carbonated — it goes flat in a bottle, and there is no way to put the fizz back.
Dry cider:
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

dry, gentle, very light — a long and lengthened drink served straight up, no ice.

Dry

Dry → Sweet

Barely sweetened. The spirit and the acid are what you taste.

What drives it: Dry cider — 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: Dry cider — supplies the acidity.

Faintly bitter

Gentle → Bitter

A bitter edge you would only notice if you looked for it.

What drives it: Pale lager — provides the bitterness.

Very light

Light → Rich

Almost weightless in the mouth — closer to a long soft drink than to a sipper.

What drives it: Pale lager — adds most of the weight.

Bold

Delicate → Bold

Bold. This drink is the loudest thing on the table.

What drives it: Pale lager — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.

What you smell first

  • Orchard fruitLeads

    From Dry cider

  • NuttyLeads

    From Pale lager

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 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 orchard fruit and nutty, 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
1/5
Sourness
1/5
Bitterness
1/5
Strength
3/5
Fruitiness
1/5
Freshness
3/5
Creaminess
0/5
Smokiness
0/5

Nutrition & alcohol

Estimate onlyCider strength varies widely by brand, from around 4% to well over 6%.
Calories
220 kcal
Sugar
10 g
Carbohydrates
22 g
Alcohol units (UK)
2.4
US standard drinks
1.35
ABV
4.8%
Serving size
500 ml
Show calculation assumptions

Source: Calculated from standard measures

Calorie breakdown: ~133 kcal from alcohol, ~87 kcal from sugar and mixers.

Likely range: 165–275 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.

Based on 250ml lager at 5% ABV and 250ml dry cider at 4.5% ABV, without the optional cordial.

These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.

Variations

  • Snakebite and Black

    Add a splash of blackcurrant cordial before pouring for a fruitier, slightly sweeter version.

  • Diesel

    Add a dash of cola or blackcurrant cordial along with the lager and cider for a stronger-tasting, sweeter pub variant.

What kind of drink this is

The structure behind the recipe

A built build: a long and lengthened beer-based drink, served straight up, no 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

    Pale lager

  • Modifier

    Dry cider

  • Sweet element

    Blackcurrant cordial (optional)

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

Straight up, no ice

Pint glass · 500ml

Chilled during mixing and then strained away from the ice, so it arrives at its coldest and most concentrated and warms from the first sip — which is why 500ml is the right size for it.

Texture and aroma

Clean

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 Snakebite

British pub tradition, popular from at least the mid-20th century onward; some pubs still decline to serve it by name.

Ingredient slugs `cider` (hard cider, alcoholic) and `blackcurrant-cordial` (non-alcoholic) were introduced for this batch — see summary. Some UK licensed premises have house policies against serving drinks called 'snakebite', a quirk worth knowing if ordering one out rather than making it at home.

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

Related tools

Scale this for a party

Work out bottles, mixers, ice and total alcohol units for any number of guests.

Recipe confidence

Simple, well-known combination with a consistently agreed ratio.

High confidence