Tom Collins
Gin, lemon and sugar, shaken and lengthened with soda — a tall, easy-drinking summer standby.
- Difficulty
- easy
- Prep time
- 5 min
- Strength
- 10% ABV
- Glassware
- Collins glass
- Base
- gin
- Serves
- 1
Related drinks
Ingredients
- Gin50ml
- Fresh lemon juice25ml
- Simple syrup20ml
- Soda water90ml
To top
Garnish: Lemon wheel, Maraschino cherry
Method
- Add gin, lemon juice and simple syrup to a shaker with ice.
- Shake for 10 seconds until chilled.
- Strain into an ice-filled Collins glass.
- Top with soda water and stir once, gently.
- Garnish with a lemon wheel and cherry.
Equipment
Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.
Cocktail shaker
Household swap: A clean jar with a tight-fitting lid
Hawthorne strainer
Household swap: A slotted spoon held over the glass
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 Gin
Best substitute: Vodka
This is the base in this drink.
Quantity: Use the same amount
Flavour impact: Replacing gin with vodka produces a John Collins — cleaner and less botanical.
What changes
Expect less bitterness and less intensity. Still a good drink, and a slightly different one.
- Bitterness ↓
- Losing bitterness makes the drink rounder and more approachable, and takes away the structure that stopped it tasting like squash.
- Intensity ↓
- A milder ingredient gets buried by whatever else is in the glass, and the drink loses the thing it was named for.
- Character
- you lose juniper-forward, botanical, dry and aromatic, and you gain neutral, clean, smooth and subtle. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.
To correct for it
- A dash of bitters restores some of the backbone without changing anything else.
- Increase the measure, or accept a gentler drink and reduce the components competing with it.
High confidenceA well-known named variation.Shifts the drinkBecomes a variation
Make it better
- Chill the glass beforehand so the drink stays cold and fizzy for longer.
- Fresh lemon juice makes a noticeable difference here — the drink is mostly citrus and fizz.
- Top with soda gently and just before serving to preserve as much carbonation as possible.
- Shake hard for 12-15 seconds with plenty of ice — a proper shake chills and dilutes the drink in one step.
Rescue this drink
- Flat
- Top with fresh soda water again just before serving — it loses fizz fast once stirred.
- Too sour
- Add 5–10ml more simple syrup and stir gently.
- Too sweet
- Add a touch more lemon juice to sharpen the balance.
- Tastes thin, with no weight to itgeneral guidance
- A short shaken drink with nothing rich in it depends on sugar and dilution for body. Try a slightly richer syrup — two parts sugar to one of water rather than equal parts — which adds weight without adding much more sweetness. Egg white or aquafaba does the same job more dramatically, and turns it into a sour.
- 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.
- 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.
- Under-diluted (tastes harsh or too concentrated)general guidance
- For one serving, stir in a few drops of chilled water to open it up. For a batch, extend the shake time slightly on the next round.
- No cocktail shakergeneral guidance
- A clean jar with a tight-fitting lid
- No cocktail strainergeneral guidance
- A slotted spoon held over the glass
Make ahead & storage
Batch the base, finish at serving
Batch the 2 stable components days ahead and add fresh lemon juice and soda water 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.
- Soda water:
- 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
off-dry, sharp, very light, sparkling — a sour-structured drink served long, over ice.
Off-dry
Dry → Sweet
Sweetened enough to take the edge off without reading as a sweet drink.
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.
No single ingredient accounts for this — it comes from the combination rather than from one bottle.
Sparkling
Still → Sparkling
Carbonated, which lifts the aromatics and makes the drink taste drier than its sugar content alone would suggest.
What drives it: Soda water — carries the carbonation.
Moderate
Delicate → Bold
Moderate: assertive enough to hold its own, mild enough for a second.
What drives it: Gin — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.
What you smell first
- Citrus peelLeads
From Gin, Fresh lemon juice, Lemon wheel
- 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 tastes weak
- Likely cause
- Usually dilution rather than measurement: shaking 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's gone flat
- Likely cause
- Soda water 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 juniper and botanicals, 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 4 components there is nowhere for complexity to hide — a sour-structured 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
- 2/5
- Sourness
- 3/5
- Bitterness
- 0/5
- Strength
- 2/5
- Fruitiness
- 1/5
- Freshness
- 4/5
- Creaminess
- 0/5
- Smokiness
- 0/5
Nutrition & alcohol
Estimate onlyBased on standard 50ml pour topped with soda; total volume varies with glass and ice.- Calories
- 150 kcal
- Sugar
- 12 g
- Carbohydrates
- 13 g
- Alcohol units (UK)
- 2
- US standard drinks
- 1.41
- ABV
- 10%
- Serving size
- 250 ml
Show calculation assumptions
Source: Calculated from standard measures
Calorie breakdown: ~138 kcal from alcohol, ~12 kcal from sugar and mixers.
Likely range: 113–188 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.
Assumes gin at 40% ABV and a full soda top-up.
These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.
Variations
Prefer it alcohol-free?
Try the Citrus Cooler, built to carry the same flavour without any alcohol.
John Collins
Replace the gin with vodka or whiskey for a cleaner or warmer base spirit.
Mint Collins
Muddle a few mint leaves with the lemon juice before shaking.
What kind of drink this is
The structure behind the recipe
A shaken build: a sour-structured gin-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
Gin
Spirit in the largest measure — read as the base.
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
Soda water
A long measure of mixer — this is what makes the drink long.
4 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
Collins glass · 250ml
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: seafood, oysters and anything raw
On its recorded taste scores this drink meets the test for seafood, oysters and anything raw — the page explains the principle behind it rather than simply asserting the pairing.
Making good drinks at home
A good drink to learn on. The beginner path covers the four things that actually make a home cocktail disappointing.
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 Tom Collins
English/American classic from the mid-19th century, its name linked to a well-known 19th-century practical joke.
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
- Vodka Collins
Vodka Collins
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- John Collins
John Collins
You may like this because it shares a refreshing-forward profile with the Tom Collins, but uses whisky instead of gin.
- Cuba Libre
Cuba Libre
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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
A well-documented classic with a consistent core ratio.