The best Halloween cocktails

We’ve purposely left the serves and garnishes quite simple for all these cocktails, but you can get as spookily creative as you like! Add sweets or non-edible decorations in the shape of spiders, snakes, ghosts or anything else you can think of to increase the scare-factor. 

Another easy way to jazz these up is to serve in some Halloween-themed glasses like the fun skull-shaped glasses shown below.

So-called because this cocktail is so potent it could revive a corpse! There is already a lot of flavour going on here because of the Absinthe and Cointreau so a dry, unflavoured gin will work best.

Makes 1 

Ingredients

• 30ml gin 

• 30ml lemon juice 

• 30ml Cointreau   

• Half teaspoon Absinthe 

• Lemon wedge to serve 

Method

• Add all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with some ice. 

• Strain into cocktail glass and garnish with orange wedge.

This cocktail is simple but super effective. A plain vodka will work best to allow the other flavours to come through. Add red sugar around the rim for a simple decoration if you like.

Makes 1 

Ingredients

• 30ml vodka 
• 30ml raspberry liqueur 
• 30ml cranberry juice 
• Splash of Champagne

Method

• Mix vodka, liqueur and cranberry juice in a shaker together with some ice. 
• Strain into martini glasses. 
• Top up with a bit of Champagne. 

You can guess from the ingredients list why this cocktail is named ‘Death in the Afternoon’. As you’d expect, it’s super strong, so beware! It might be a shame to use a good vintage Champagne for this, but there is quite a lot of Champers in here so you’ll want it to be half decent.

Makes 1 

Ingredients

• 135ml Champagne 
• 45ml Absinthe 

Method

• Pour absinthe into a glass.
• Top up with Champagne.

Anything green in colour is great for a Halloween cocktail. A big pitcher gives you plenty of opportunity to decorate so feel free to go crazy. For the white wine we would recommend something dry and crisp in style such as Pinot Grigio or Chenin Blanc.

Makes 8

Ingredients

• Bottle of dry white wine  
• 200ml apple liqueur 
• 150ml pineapple juice 
• 1 orange 
• 1 green apple 
• 150g strawberries

Method

• Segment and quarter the orange. Thinly slice the strawberries and chop the apple into small chunks.  
• Stir in the wine, apple liqueur and pineapple juice. 
• Put ice into glasses and add the sangria.

Here comes another super strong cocktail. Three different types of rum are used to great effect here – white, spiced and dark rum but the high amount of fruit juice masks the huge amount of rum so caution is highly recommended.

Makes 1 

Ingredients

• 30ml white rum
• 30ml spiced rum 
• 30ml dark rum 
• 30ml lemon juice 
• 30ml pineapple juice 
• 30ml passionfruit syrup 
• 15ml grenadine 
• Fresh mint to serve

Method

• Shake together all the ingredients apart from grenadine in a shaker with ice. 
• Strain into a tall glass. 
• Pour into the grenadine over the back of a spoon so that it sinks to the bottom of the glass. 
• Garnish with mint sprig.

This recipe can be tinkered with depending on how strong you want to. For the rum, we’d recommend something like the Appleton Estate Kingston 62 Jamaican Gold Rum.

Makes 12

Ingredients

• 900ml cranberry juice 
• 900ml apple juice (or apple cider if you want it a bit stronger) 
• 500ml ginger ale 
• 500ml golden rum 
• Lemon slices 
• Any fun garnishes you want to float to make it spooky e.g. spiders or spooky sweets

Method

• Make sure all the ingredients are properly chilled before mixing altogether in a punch bowl. 
• Serve straight from here!

This is a boozy makeover of the drink made famous by Harry Potter. For the vodka, we’d recommend something like our own Distil:31 Flywheel Vanilla Vodka.

Makes 3 

Ingredients

• 130ml butterscotch schnapps 
• 90ml vanilla vodka 
• 1 litre cream soda 
• 175ml whipped cream 

Method

• Mix together the schnapps, vodka and cream soda. 
• Divide between beer tankards. 
• Top carefully with whipped cream to create the head.

This special Halloween cocktail using coconut rum is absolutely delicious. The ghosts are easy to make, a dob of black food colouring on a marshmallow is super effective!

Serves 1 

Ingredients

• 60ml coconut rum
• 30ml vanilla vodka
• 60ml coconut cream 
• 120ml sparkling lemon and lime drink 
• White marshmallows
• Black food colouring

Method

• Mix rum, vodka and coconut cream in a cocktail shaker with ice. 
• Strain into a tall glass and add the sparkling lemon and lime drink. 
• Decorate with a ghost marshmallow – make by putting eyes on them using a bit of food colouring.

There are plenty of spicy Margarita cocktail recipes out there if you want to make them from scratch but for the easiest recipe under the sun you could try our Pimentae Spicy Margarita mix.

Makes 1

Ingredients

• Pimentae Spicy Margarita mix
• Fresh red chilis for decoration 

Method

• Easy! Strain the spicy margarita mix straight into a margarita glass. 
• Make little devil horns for the glass out of red chilis by cutting off the tops then slicing part-way down the chili so they slot onto the rim of the glasses.

The blood-effect down the glass can be achieved with red gel food colouring if you don’t happen to have any edible fake blood in the house. Any sort of delicious sparkling wine will work whether you choose Prosecco, Champagne or something else.

Makes 1

Ingredients

• 30ml cherry syrup 

• 1 amarena cherry 

• 120ml sparkling wine 

• Red gel food colouring to make fake blood for the glass

Method

• Put the cherry into the bottom of a Champagne flute. Add the cherry syrup. 

• Top with sparkling wine.

• Drip food colouring around the glass to look like blood.