Whether you are making drinks to serve at home for a party or in your bar/restaurant, a great way of getting the evening going and an easy way to save time is to make good use a punch recipes or cocktails that can be made in quantities. Read on for some of our pitcher perfect cocktail ideas.

So where did for punches originate from? It is widely believed that British sailors discovered “punch” in India in the 16th century. The drink’s name is thought to derive from the Hindi word “panch” which means five – referring to the five ingredients used to compose the punch. As with much of the legend that surrounds the history of any food or drink recipes – the story has many variations. One source claims that the “five” refers to the five different elements required in punch – thought to be sweet, sour, bitter, weak and alcoholic ie sugar, a bitter aperitif, lemon juice, beer and pure alcohol. However another source claimed an entirely different concoction which included: tea, arrack (a form of alcohol in the East Indies made from raw ingredients such as rice or molasses), sugar, lemons and water.

With our recipes we are looking at quantities that would make at least 6 servings – depending on the size of the pitcher used or glasses selected for serving.

Before suggesting the recipes – a few good tips which we would recommend to achieve the best results:

• Mix all the ingredients in the order specified and if one of the ingredients sparkles or fizzes (eg lemonade or champagne) add these last of all and just before serving. Stir as little as possible to preserve the effervescence of fizzy ingredients.
• Use sugar syrup if the recipe requires it wherever possible. Definitely don’t use granulated sugar as this doesn’t dissolve so well. If you really don’t have time to make the syrup yourself – caster sugar (extra fine/refined baking sugar) can be used as an alternative as it will dissolve more effectively into the mixture.
• Chill all the ingredients before mixing (unless you are making a hot punch such as mulled wine!) rather than using ice to chill it after you have mixed it as this can affect the composition of the cocktail by diluting it once the ice melts.
• Use the right punch bowl for the punch. Sounds a bit obvious but cold punches can be served in any bowl but be careful with hot punch recipes. Use a metal bowl if you can or even better a heat resistant bowl. Preheat the bowl in hot water so that a hot punch is not being served from a cold bowl.
• If possible avoid floating too many pieces of fruit in the bowl – better to have these along with the ice already in the selected serving glasses.

Check out our recommendations on the attached downloadable pdfs. We have selected a cross section of tastes and flavours allowing for different spirit bases, as well as colours to catch the eye. These allow for preparing the drinks in an average size jug or pitcher (using as a guideline a pitcher which could contain up to 1.5 litres of liquid maximum.). NB. You may need to revise the liquid contents according to the size of pitcher/punch bowl that you plan to use.

The recipes that translate best into larger quantities are those that are built in the glasses – ie those that don’t require shaking with ice. Examples on in-the-spirit that we would recommend would be the Alabama Slammer, Cranberry Kick, Cassis Screwdriver, and Limestone Breeze.

Click below to download Pitcher Perfect PDFs