What Is Sweet And Sour Mix Made Of?

If you've ever walked by an electric yellow bottle of sweet and sour mix at the liquor store, you may have wondered what's in there, exactly. These premade cocktail bases are a common addition to margaritas and drinks with "sour" in the name — or, at least, they were. Sweet and sour mix had its heyday in the latter half of the 20th century, from roughly the '70s to the '90s, but you still have your pick of a wide variety of brands today, and ingredients vary a lot from bottle to bottle.

The most basic sweet and sour mixes combine tart lemon juice, sweet syrup, water, and sometimes lime juice or aromatic citrus oils. Although some brands, often the pricier small labels, stick to a short ingredients list, many more widely available, cheaper commercial include additives like high fructose corn syrup, sour-but-tasteless citric acid, artificial flavors, and preservatives like sodium benzoate.

Originally designed to make things easier for bartenders, these ready-made mixes do allow you to skip the rigamarole of juicing fresh citrus. However, today's mixologists usually prefer to make their own sweet and sour base, as it's relatively easy and results in a fresher, brighter taste. Cocktail experts will even say that using sour mix is the biggest mistake you can make when shaking up a whiskey sour. Amateur home bartenders tend to agree, and the homemade approach also appeals to cooks who prefer to avoid artificial flavors and other extraneous additives.

Making sweet and sour mix is easier than you think, and the homemade stuff lasts for 10 days to two weeks in the fridge and several months in the freezer, giving you plenty of time to dole it out. The traditional ratio for the mixer is three parts liquid (two parts juice to one part water and one part sugar) to sugar, but if you like your drinks on the tarter side, try one part water, one part sugar, and three parts juice. Juice some lemons and a smaller quantity of limes, then combine with water and simple syrup that's been given time to cool.

A standard sweet and sour base is super versatile, ready for use in margaritas, whiskey sours, and daiquiris. Alternatively, add your personal culinary stamp to the mix with a few creative ingredients to personalize your cocktails. For floral, bitter notes, use grapefruit juice as the acid and honey as the simple syrup.

If extra sweetness is more your thing, balance milder Meyer lemon juice against fresh oranges, and incorporate caramel notes with brown sugar — just make sure to taste your mixer and adjust the sugar content as needed. Or, add warmth with slices of ginger simmered in the simple syrup. You can also borrow a trick to batch and preserve lime juice (as well as reduce waste) and utilize the peels by blitzing them into a thick juice or simmering them in the syrup.

Sour cocktails are a category of beverages that, unsurprisingly, contain sour ingredients. Specifically, these are drinks made of a simple blend of citrus juice, alcohol, and a sweetener — or a glug of sweet and sour mix and booze. They're usually shaken and served straight up. More complex sours might also feature another flavoring or liqueur, like the Cointreau or triple sec in margaritas.

A few recognizable examples of sour cocktails include whiskey sours, Long Island iced teas, and Tom Collins. Technically, some of these drinks require more lime than lemon or different sweeteners to get them exactly right, but so long as you're not a purist, you can use margarita mix, whiskey sour mix, or sweet and sour mix interchangeably to whip them up. The same goes for the customized pitcher of homemade mixer in your fridge.

The best part is that it doesn't take an expert to prepare these classic and simple beverages. Once you have a pitcher of mixer, you can make tons of simple but classic cocktails with only a switch of your alcohol. Use vodka and Cointreau, for example, to make a lemon drop martini — lemon zest sugar rim suggested but not required — or use apple vodka for a modern appletini. Swap in rum to make a daiquiri. Or, feature agave nectar in your simple syrup and add tequila to craft a Tommy's margarita.