I was actually pretty excited when I started researching this and found murmurings of it
being a prohibition era drink invented by one old man Bishop of Long Island, Kingsport, Tennessee.
He was apparently trying to make a drink as boozy as possible
but which looked like something innocent, an iced tea perhaps? And combined tequila,
vodka, rum, gin and whiskey with some maple syrup. Considering that vodka barely broke the U.S market
until the mid-20th century though and tequila wasn't really commonplace until then either,
I'd say that this unsubstantiated story doesn't really hold up. But I'd have loved
it if that turned out to be a classic. The more usual and likely story is that
it was invented in Long Island, New York State by Robert Butt in a competition to
build a cocktail using triple sec in the 1970s. This also seems a little bit weird
to me because triple sec isn't exactly the hero of this drink so I can't see any brand being
particularly happy having their lovingly crafted product fighting with like 15 other ingredients.
But the 70s was a wild time and I couldn't really find you any better stories so here we are.
Either way this drink has gained notoriety for its deceptive booziness.
Look that said, hardly any bars, at least here, the states might well be different, will do a
full 30 ml pour for each spirit. For that price you could buy a decent meal out in Australia.
The easiest way for bartenders to remember the specs is that it's every white spirit in
your speed rail, plus orange liqueur lemon and coca-cola and that's definitely the level of
booze I'd use, as long as your house pours are decent. I'm obviously really lucky with mine.
I did like one American article I read which said there's no point using top shelf,
but make sure you use something in a glass bottle,
and I would probably say that's something to live by in general.
So we're gonna get our garnish ready first. There's definitely not any strict rules on what
you're gonna garnish this with, I just figured a little lemon wheel and cherry seemed fitting.
Pop through the cherry and back through the wheel, and squeeze some lemon juice.
So for those of you that have seen my little bartending tools video I do talk about a stepped
jigger, which is sort of shorter and faster than this and has steps of 15, 30,
45, 60 mils or half ounce, ounce and so on, and that's actually perfect for this because basically
you can look in and you can do your 15 mils of everything in one and then just tip it right in.
I did forget mine today though so we'll see how I go.
Honestly it's not the end of the world if you have, you know, like 20 mls of vodka and 10 mils
of white rum, it's not going to massively throw off the balance of this cocktail. Basically you're
just wanting 60 mls total of all of these. We're going to go 15 ml of gin, 15 ml of
white rum, 15 ml of tequila, maybe a little bit extra tequila, because why not, 15 mls of vodka,
then we have 15 mils of triple sec.
15 mils of cane sugar syrup. Again, in the bar I would have this in a bottle that had
a speed pourer on and that would all just kind of go in the mix too, and 30mls of lemon juice.
Definitely don't put the Coke in there because it'll explode all over you. Add the Coca-Cola
to your serving glass. Of course if you're more of a Pepsi person then that's fine too,
we're not going to judge. And we're talking about kind of 45 to 60 mls. This is a pretty big glass
so I'm going to go about 60. You can measure if you like, it's not
an exact science. Then fill with ice and fill your shaker tin with ice.
Pop your tins together, check that it seals and shake as hard as you can.
And then if you just pour gently, you don't really have to double strain because it's
just going on ice anyway and the chips aren't going to make much of a difference to this.
Long Island Iced Tea. So now you know.
You know like when you're on holiday and you find soft drinks that are a completely
different flavor to the soft drinks that you're used to? That's what this tastes like.
Like, it's like you're in Spain and there's a lemon coke or something.
Ah Fanta Lemon, I still live for that shit.
I'm probably not gonna give up my martinis for it, I'm not gonna lie. That probably says more about
me than anything else. As much as I did advocate for the Smokey Cokey in my Sottish Whisky video,
and got a lot of flack for it, it was kind of more of a joke about not taking that all too seriously.
Here it does, it just basically tastes like a soft drink and I'm not a massive fan.
So yeah, I, I'm, it's, it's great for what it is. I mean I think people order this because they
think that, you know, it's gonna get them more drunk and honestly like I guess it kind of might,
because the kind of other drinks that have this much booze in it are things like a martini or
an old fashioned, which obviously you know, you're very aware that you're drinking booze
at that point. This does kind of taste like a soft drink so it definitely goes down pretty
easily and so I can imagine sinking a few and and maybe you know having the best night of your life.
It's not honestly for me, when I'm drinking pretty boozy stuff I like
to know that I'm drinking pretty boozy stuff and sort of sit on it and ruminate,
but yeah, I definitely, definitely see why these are so popular.