Red, White, and Blue 4th of July Cocktails

After my success with making a tequila sunrise I got curious about making other layered drinks. Since the 4th of July is coming up, I decided to make a fun, layered drink to celebrate Independence Day!

This drink can be made with any colors, for more specifics on how to select your layers, see the next step.

Step 1: Ingredients

For this recipe, I used the following:

• Gatorade Fierce in Blue Cherry flavor (medium sugar content)
• Sobe pina colada (highest sugar content)
• Diet cranberry lime juice (lowest sugar content)
• Tequila (I used Espolón since we still had some in the office and I had a good experience with it before)

The thing that makes these kinds of layered drinks work is that the heavier liquids sink to the bottom and the lighter liquids are able to float on top. You can tell the order that the drinks will settle by reading their sugar content. Drinks with a higher sugar content will sink to the bottom while drinks with a lower sugar content will float to the top. One thing to be aware of while selecting drinks, is to look at the grams of sugar as well as the serving size. For example, a 16 oz drink with 24 grams of sugar will have a lower sugar content than than an 8 oz drink with 24 grams of sugar. For this reason, it's important to pay attention to the ratio of sugar to serving size to make sure your drinks actually have different sugar content, otherwise you won't get the cool cool effect of separate layers.

It's also good to keep in mind what color layers are going to be and make sure that complimentary colors are not next to each other or the place between them will turn brown.

Step 2: First Layer

First, I filled the glass with ice and in a big measuring cup I mixed 1.5 oz of tequila with enough gatorade to fill the glass about a third of the way, then poured it over the ice into the glass. If you want to make this non-alcoholic, skip the tequila.

Step 3: Second Layer

For the second layer, I used a measuring cup to pour the Sobe slowly and steadily down the side of the glass to prevent mixing with the gatorade as much as possible. The Sobe should sink to the bottom. I experimented with pouring in the Sobe first and then the gatorade, but I found that pouring the Sobe through the gatorade made the colors of the final drink brighter and clearer, but your milage may vary depending on what drinks you use.

Step 4: Third Layer

I used a measuring cup to slowly pour the diet cranberry juice to fill the rest of the glass.

Step 5: Experiment!

I originally tried adding the Sobe first, but the cranberry juice and gatorade mixed together in an unattractive way. I also tried mixing the drink and it turned this purply-gray color, which is kind of interesting, if you're into that.

You can also make this drink in pitchers but it doesn't stay separate when you pour it into glasses.

Step 6: Enjoy!

This is a super easy drink, as long as you are careful about sugar content in the drinks you use. It's perfect to impress your friends at 4th of July parties this weekend!