A Purple Gatorade Cocktail Recipe for Staying Hydrated While Having Fun
Learn how to make cocktails with Gatorade and others that taste like this energy drink. Stay hydrated while you enjoy an alcoholic beverage at a party.
You might have Gatorade in your refrigerator for after a workout (or even a party), but you probably don’t have it on your bar.
But let us sing this energy drink’s praises. As a mixer, it’s colorful, fruity, and contains electrolytes, which means that you’ll shake up a vibrant cocktail that not only looks and tastes good but helps rehydrate you at a party. A little party guidance: drinking dehydrates you at an astonishing rate as your body tries to filter the alcohol from your system. Don’t completely rely on the Gatorade content of your drink to replenish yourself; always sip your drinks slowly and have plenty of water.
That’s enough of a public service announcement. Let’s get right into how you could be making brightly colored purple Gatorade shots and cocktails. Serve these creations up at your next party and surprise your guests with this grape-flavored mixer.
Preparation time: 3 minutes
Cooking time: None
Total time: 3 minutes
Servings: 1
Ingredients
Glassware
Highball, collins, or other tall glass
Preparation instructions
Fill the glass with ice cubes and pour in the vodka, blue curaçao, and grenadine. Stir gently to combine.
Top off with purple Gatorade. Watch as your drink turns a twilight ombre of blue and purple.
Recipe adapted from I Am Baker
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Purple Gatorade cocktail variations
If you go to a bar and order a grape Gatorade shot, you may be sorely surprised to find that the drink contains no Gatorade whatsoever. The drink recipe above is a very literal take on a Gatorade and vodka drink.
Other purple cocktails that might look exactly like Gatorade, like a purple people eater, contain none of the sports drink. While people may make Gatorade mixed drinks with rum, tequila, or other hard liquors to make easy drinks at home, the standard Gatorade-themed bar recipes are nothing more than an homage. Below are some variations that look and taste like they’re full of electrolytes, but the only thing missing from these cocktails is Gatorade.
Grape gatorade shot: This vodka and blue curaçao shot becomes purple when blue liqueur is mixed with cranberry juice and grenadine. Think back to the color wheels we learned back in elementary school art class and follow those steps.
To make this shot, combine 1 ½ ounces of vodka, 1 ounce of blue curacao, 1 ounce of sweet and sour mix, 1 ounce of grenadine, and 1 ounce of cranberry juice with plenty of ice in a cocktail shaker. If you don’t have cranberry juice, grape juice substitutes well. Strain into a large shot glass with a purple sugar rim. You can also divide the drink between two shots if you have smaller glasses. To prepare your glass, run some simple syrup around the rim before dipping it in purple sugar. You should be able to find this colorful sugar anywhere you buy baking ingredients.
Purple people eater: This purple drink is a full-blown cocktail with a spooky name, making it a must for Halloween parties and other themed gatherings. The only difference between this and the above recipe is that you shift the proportions up slightly. Use the same ingredients and methodology, down to the purple sugar rim on the glass.
Bartender’s tip: Many shots can double as cocktails if you nudge the quantities of each ingredient up. Most shot glasses can hold up to 2 ounces of liquid, while martini and rocks glasses hold roughly 8 ounces of liquid. Keep the same ratios, and double—or triple—the volume.
Whenever you scale up, just beware of the strength of the drink. For fruity and candy-themed shot recipes that are heavy on the mixers but not on the liquor, you can generally double the recipe and end up with a cocktail you can serve cold in a martini glass or on the rocks. If you think doubling the alcohol content is too much, increase the volume of mixers instead.
You can also top up many drinks with club soda which adds volume without adding flavor. Lemon-lime sodas like 7Up or Sprite are also useful for generating volume but they work best in fruity—especially citrusy—cocktails. They’ll also add some sweetness to the drink.
Other Gatorade cocktails
Glowing aurora
This cocktail combines 1 ounce of coconut rum, 2 ounces of melon liqueur, 2 ounces of sweet and sour mix, 1 ounce of vodka, 1 ounce of blue curaçao, and a top-up of blue Gatorade to create an ombre highball cocktail, ranging from bright green to neon blue.
Gatorade margarita
Stir up a party-sized batch of cocktails for your next weekend barbeque. Add a 20-ounce bottle of blue Gatorade, 1 cup of thawed frozen limeade concentrate, 1 cup silver tequila (or blanco in Spanish), and one-third cup blue curacao to a pitcher, and stir with a wooden spoon. Split the mixture between 4-6 glasses and pour the drink over ice. Garnish each with an orange slice.
For a variety of this drink that looks more like the green original, you can blend up tequila, powdered green Gatorade mix, water, and ice in a blender. The result is a frozen cocktail that looks like a slushy margarita. It tastes like one, too.
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