3 Seriously Impressive Cocktails for Date Night That Are Secretly Easy

Want to impress that special someone? Maybe date night is coming up and you really want to wow them with your skills? Well, you're in luck because I'm going to show you three incredibly deceptively easy cocktails to make that'll make you look like you know exactly what you're doing. Plus a little bonus nightcap that I think you're going to really want to stick around for. But all right, let's jump right into it. So for this video, I wanted to have these cocktails fit into a very specific specific set of criteria. English is hard. I'm sorry. These cocktails needed to be easy to pull off. So no crazy ingredients, no hard to find ingredients, no crazy infusions, no crazy techniques. And the more easily accessible ingredients, the better. Number two, the flavor profile needed to be approachable and accessible. So no harsh ingredients or more out there flavors. That is that is maybe like an acquired taste or nothing super overly bitter because maybe that's not everybody's jam. And I really want this video to lead to success for you. And number three, they still needed to somehow, even with those two other things in mind, have depth and complexity. Basically something that seems harder to pull off than it really is. And, you know, I didn't just want this list to be, you know, generic basic cocktails because sure, you could find that. And of course, number four, they need to be fun for a date night. And so with those specific criteria in mind, let's get right into the cocktails. The Gin Basil Smash. Let's hop right into it. We're first going to do three quarters of an ounce of fresh lemon juice right into our shaker. Three quarters of an ounce of simple syrup, which is just water and sugar in equal parts mixed together. We're going to do two ounces of a great gin. I'm going to use this Mexican gin, the Condesa gin. I think it's going to give it a nice, lovely flavor. But you could use, you know, any gin that you really like. Some that I think are actually pretty great. St. George, you know, any, you know, lemon dried gin that you enjoy. I actually think that Beefeater is not a bad one for the price. And then what's really going to give this cocktail its complexity is we're going to do six to eight basil leaves right into our cocktail shaker. Some of you might even have some basil in your house already, but this is where the complexity is going to come from. And let's add some ice and you're just going to shake it up. And so obviously this requires you to have a cocktail shaker, but I really hope you have one. It's super simple. I think every house needs to have a cocktail shaker in my opinion. And some people say to muddle the basil leaves, but quite frankly, if you're going to shake it, it's going to break up and release the oils in there anyway. So I think it's kind of a waste of time and space. Plus, this makes it faster. And so we're going to grab our nice lowball and glassware is something that really does make a difference. We're going to fill it with fresh ice and then we're going to double strain because you don't want pieces of basil in the drink itself. You want the flavor, but not necessarily the pieces of basil. But then again, it's your drink. If that's what you want to do, go for it. And then what you're going to do for a garnish is save one of the nicest basil leaves that you have and just put one right into the cocktail glass. And there you have a very simple, but very complex cocktail, the Gin Basil Smash. That's amazing. It's definitely complex, even though it's very simple in its build, quick and easy to whip up. If you just have lemons and some sugar, you can make all these ingredients in just a couple of minutes. But I think if you were to serve this to someone, they'd go, wow, that's very deep and complex and enjoyable. Definitely a very good winner here. The Tequila Eastside. All right. So for this next one, it's actually one of my favorite cocktails of all time. This is going to require us to have a cucumber. So we're just going to get the cucumber's condom off. Forgive me. What we're going to do is slice up a couple of cucumber slices. I'm going to do maybe three. If you have one of these Y peelers at home, like a citrus peeler, we're going to actually peel an entire big strip from the top of this cucumber. I kind of wish I did it before I cut the wheel so we can make sure we got a really long one. So you want to just basically get it on the edge and just get a nice, good strip going. All right. So there we have a nice cucumber ribbon. We're going to save that because that's going to be part of our garnish. It's going to make it look very impressive. Now we're going to grab our Shakerton. We're going to do two of those cucumbers. You can do three if you really want. And we're going to muddle this up because we're going to break it up so that when it gets into the other ingredients, it's going to really infuse that cucumber flavor. We're going to do one ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice. You can just cut up a lime and squeeze it and measure out one ounce. Three quarters of an ounce of simple syrup. You're going to want to grab some fresh mint. We're going to do maybe five, six, seven, eight mint leaves. And I really try to go for a variety of spirits in this video. So we're going to do two ounces of a really great tequila. I'm using Cimarron Blanco. I really like how robust it is and how it stands up in cocktails. And I mean, if you want tequila recommendations, you can just go through, you know, my entire video library. There's a million of them. So let's add some ice right here. Okay, we are going to try to take our cucumber strip. This is really what's going to take it and make it really impressive. Is we're going to try to get it inside the inside of this glass to stick to the outside. Try not to, let's not do that. All right, I think. And if you can pull it off, I know it takes, obviously I'm not making it look easy, but I think it'll look really, really nice. All right, so after a little bit of trial and error, you end up with a really nice ribbon looking thing there. And then we're actually going to fill with ice in the middle so that the, there we go, look at that. All right, and double strain it out right over the top. And then we're going to grab some fresh mint leaves. I'm just going to get this off there. Give it a little spank. And then you can put that right in there. And there we have the tequila Eastside. And there's other ways that you can garnish it. Like if you wanted to take your cucumber slice and imagine that the ribbon wasn't there and you just had that. Like it's nice and easy as well if you don't want to do what I did and look dumb. But there is the tequila Eastside. So refreshing, perfect for the summer. The tequila cucumber mint combo is outstanding. It's herbal, it's vegetal. The tequila actually helps with both of those flavors as well. Lime and simple syrup gives it that nice citrusy element. It's very well balanced and it's such an easy crusher. And I think that again, the flavor profile, very complex, like way more complex than you might think if you just like read these ingredients and easy to make at home. Mint, cucumber, tequila, very simple. The Kentucky Buck. And we're going to grab one incredible, one whole incredible strawberry. Just take the top off of the strawberry, you nasty. And then if you want to make it easier, you can just cut it in half. So we're just going to cut our strawberry in half. And we're going to muddle this up. And we're going to do two ounces of bourbon. I'm using here Old Grandad's Bottled and Bond. It's actually a great bourbon for a great price. I think like a liter cost of 25 bucks roughly. This, all these cocktails kind of follow a very similar pattern. We're gonna do three quarters of an ounce lemon juice. We're actually only going to do a half ounce of simple syrup for this one though, because the strawberry have a little bit of inherent sweetness to it, as well as one of the last elements we'll add later. Now this will be the first departure of something that's like maybe more of a cocktail ingredient. It's Angostura Bitters. This one you can find actually most grocery stores. They do carry it. So we're gonna do two dashes of that. And what is bitters? They're just kind of like seasoning for cocktails. And then we're going to add our ice and shake it. Now let's say you really want to step up your game and be very impressive. You can get these like clear ice molds to make like a nice ice spear into your, for your cocktail. That'll look great. And then we're going to double strain this out. And then for the last ingredient, we're going to grab some ginger beer, top it off with some ginger beer. Ginger beer is going to give it a slight little spice, some bubbles. It's going to be the perfect little blending of all of these flavors. And this is us taking a simple cocktail and elevating it with a very simple addition of ginger beer. I really like Fever Trees Ginger Beer. It's outstanding. And then for the garnish, half of a strawberry, cut the bottom of it, cut it in half. And there you have the Kentucky Buck. Nook, if you book, why nook? If you book, why nook? Anyway, so refreshing, deep, complex. I also love this cocktail because it takes something that a lot of people think is like a man's man drink, like bourbon neat. And you turn it into a really incredible, refreshing cocktail with strawberry, lemon, and ginger beer. And it just goes to show you that spirits don't have gender, but being an asshole is contagious. So don't be a dickhead. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. I don't know where this comes to me sometimes. Sorry. Anyway, super refreshing, delicious, and it's outstanding. I really can't tell you any more about this. This is really great. The Revolver. Now, this will be a little quick one. I know I said that we're only going to do three cocktails. I'm going to give you a little bonus nightcap. Let's pretend your dinner date is going amazing. You've had a couple of these. The night is winding down a little bit, but you want one more drink to kind of finish the night off. This is a really easy cocktail to make and one that I really love. It requires having like one ingredient that's a little, two ingredients that are a little out there, but it's definitely worth it. So the first thing you want to do is a half ounce of coffee liqueur. Now, yeah, that requires you to go get another thing. But again, this is a bonus one. So just indulge me. So we're going to do a half ounce of a coffee liqueur. We are going to do two dashes of orange bitters. I like to use Reagan's Bitters. And then we're going to do, again, two ounces of our bourbon. You're going to want to add some ice to your mixing glass. And again, you could just use a regular spoon if you have it. But, you know, I have a mixing glass and a bar spoon, so. And you can definitely serve this in a lowball. I'm actually going to serve it in a coupe. I think this looks impressive. It looks nice. And there we have our coupe. Pour that out. And now for the fun part. This cocktail calls specifically for this as a garnish. We're going to grab an orange first. And we're going to grab a nice thick peel of the orange. And we're gonna do a little trick. But before that, we got to grab a match. And we're going to light this match. And then we're going to grab our orange. I like to do it with my left hand, actually. Which is weird. Same. And we're just going to express that over the top. And there we are. We have our orange peel. And there you have the Revolver. Delicious. And so there you have it. Three incredible cocktails for you to make on date night. Plus a little bonus nightcap to really have the perfect ending to your evening. You know, if things didn't go well in the other sense. So at least we'll get a little nightcap out of it. But there you go. I hope you enjoyed this video. I really enjoyed making it. I thought it was really fun. So yeah. Cheers. I've got some cocktails to drink. And I don't have a date today. So I'll just, you know. Maybe I can't drink them. Maybe I'm not allowed. I don't know.