Long Island Iced Tea
Five spirits and a citrus-cola top, built over ice to the amber colour that gives it its name.
CC BY 2.0 · Cropped, white-balanced, graded and re-encoded to WebP by eXir.
A Long Island Iced Tea in a tall glass over ice, garnished with a lemon wheel and a green straw
Serving
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring. Dilution is modelled rather than measured, as a fraction of the poured volume before any ice; dotted figures descend from that estimate.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Ingredients
15 ml vodka
15 ml London dry gin
15 ml white rum
15 ml blanco tequila
15 ml orange liqueurProprietary
15 ml fresh lemon juice
15 ml simple syrup
30 ml cola
- 15 ml vodka
- 15 ml London dry gin
- 15 ml white rum
- 15 ml blanco tequila
- 15 ml orange liqueurProprietary
- 15 ml fresh lemon juice
- 15 ml simple syrup
- 30 ml cola
- ~26 ml water
Glass
Vessel
135 ml of liquid plus 230 ml of cubed ice occupies about 365 ml, inside the 400 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
3 steps · 50sBuild the 15 ml vodka, the 15 ml London dry gin, the 15 ml white rum, the 15 ml blanco tequila, the 15 ml orange liqueur, the 15 ml fresh lemon juice and the 15 ml simple syrup over cubed ice in a collins glass.
Five spirits at the same small measure is the entire design: no single one of the 15 ml vodka, the 15 ml London dry gin, the 15 ml white rum, the 15 ml blanco tequila or the 15 ml orange liqueur is meant to be tasted on its own, only the neutral strength they add together under the lemon, syrup and cola.
Top with the 30 ml cola.
Stir briefly, just enough to bring the cola through the rest without beating out its fizz.
Common pitfallA short pour of cola is what gives the drink its iced-tea colour and a faint bitter edge; too heavy a hand with it turns the drink into a rum and cola with extra steps and buries the citrus and syrup under the soda instead.
Keeping and make-ahead
Batched ahead, this keeps sealed and cold. The water line the engine adds is the dilution figure from the spec panel, not a rule of thumb.
About
Five clear spirits, citrus and a short top of cola, credited to a 1972 Long Island bartending contest and contested by an older, unrelated Tennessee drink of the same name.
The recipe served today is credited to Robert "Rosebud" Butt, who says he made it in 1972 at the OBI East in Hampton Bays, New York, as his entry in a bartending contest that challenged roughly twenty competitors to build a drink around triple sec 1. Butt won, and the version he entered (vodka, gin, white rum, tequila and triple sec, lengthened with lemon juice and cola) is the one that spread from Long Island outward 1.
The name is contested by an unrelated, older drink from a different Long Island. Southern lore credits a Prohibition-era bootlegger, Charles "Old Man" Bishop of Long Island, Tennessee, with a 1920s drink of the same name, built from whiskey, rum, vodka, gin and tequila sweetened with maple syrup rather than citrus and cola 1. Tourism boards representing the two towns later staged a publicity contest to settle which drink had the better claim to the name; Long Island, New York's side lost and called the result rigged 1. The two recipes remain genuinely different drinks that happen to share a name, not variations of one another.
The name itself describes the drink's colour rather than its contents: built correctly, the five spirits and cola turn the same amber as brewed iced tea, and no tea is anywhere in the glass 2.
- 1The Hazy Hamptons Legacy of Inventing the Long Island Iced Teadanspapers.com
- 2Long Island iced teaen.wikipedia.org