Long Island Iced Tea

Cool off with a refreshing Long Island Iced Tea! It’s an easy cocktail that has all the sweet tea flavor you love, but is loaded with booze!

Why We Love Long Island Iced Tea

• Long Island Iced Teas are dangerously easy to drink. They taste ah-mazing and there are about 3 shots in each cocktail… which makes them great for parties.
• If you have strong hand muscles, you can do the fancy bartender pour for this drink. Put pour spouts onto each bottle, grab 2 in each hand and pour the gin, tequila, rum, and vodka into the shaker all at once. (It’s a 3 count.)
• This is the ultimate summer cocktail. LITs are delicious on a hot day, perfect for cookouts, and you can even make it in a pitcher for big batch serving.

Long Island Iced Tea Ingredients

SPIRITS: You need 5 different spirits to make a long island – gin, silver, tequila, vodka, white rum, and triple sec. If you’re having any “I don’t like that spirit” feelings, don’t worry. You don’t taste them at all.

MIXERS: To finish out this cocktail, you’ll need sweet and sour mix and Coca-Cola. The combination of these mixers with the spirits makes everything taste like a sweet iced tea. It’s crazy! The splash of Coke will give you that perfect brown iced tea color, too.

GARNISH: Keep it simple with a lemon slice or wedge for classic iced tea vibes.

How to Make a Long Island Iced Tea

Jump to Recipe

STEP 1 Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Pour in the gin, tequila, vodka, rum, triple sec, and sweet and sour mix. Pop on the shaker’s lid and shake for about 30 seconds until your hand gets cold.

STEP 2 Strain the drink into a glass filled with ice.

STEP 3 Top the drink with a splash of Coke and garnish with a lemon slice.

Tips & Tricks

You definitely want to use silver tequila and rum. Reposado and añejo tequila have a more refined taste that doesn’t blend into the cocktail very well. Spiced rum and dark rum have a completely different taste from silver/white rum. Do not use them, it will mess up your cocktail.

There are a bunch of fun variations on this cocktail you can make really easily using the same base of gin, tequila, rum, vodka, triple sec, and sweet and sour.

• Grateful Dead – instead of Coke, pour in 3/4 ounce each of blue curaçoa and Chambord. It creates a pretty tie-dye effect in the glass.
• Darth Vader/Black Pearl – Instead of Coke, pour in 1 ounce of Chambord. The yellow and purple combo gives the drink a brownish/black color that’s neat.
• Adios Motherfucker – Instead of triple sec use blue curaçoa and instead of Coke use lemon-lime soda (any brand is fine). Add a lemon slice and cherry to garnish.

Long Island Iced Tea Recipe FAQ

How much alcohol is in a Long Island Iced Tea?

There are 3.75 ounces of alcohol in an LIT. That’s about 3 shots for those playing along at home.

Does Lond Island Iced Tea get you drunk?

It sure does! Any cocktail will get you drunk because there’s alcohol in it, but a Long Island has a lot of booze and tastes amazing so it’s easy to keep drinking them… leaving the shots to stack up.

For most people, your body can process about 1 shot per hour. So 1 cocktail will take about 3 hours to work through your system.

Is Long Island Iced Tea a girly drink?

No. A Long Island Iced Tea isn’t a girly drink. It’s loaded with booze, will put you on your ass faster than most drinks, and looks like you’re having an iced tea.

That being said… I don’t know where the whole “girly drink” stigma came from, but it’s not a real thing as far as your bartender is concerned. We want to make you whatever you want to drink. If you like a tropical drink, order it. (They usually have lots of booze in them too.) Do you like cranberry & vodka? Great! (But know that mentally I’ll have a “what you got your period?” moment thanks to The Departed, but 100% no judgment.) So don’t worry about what other people drink, channel your inner JT and order that appletini!

Other Recipes You May like

• Lemon Drop
• Peanut and Coke with Bourbon
• Cosmopolitan
• Grasshopper
• Margarita on the Rocks
• Vodka Jello Shots