How to Make Jungle Juice Right
What TO Do
Use creative and complementary flavors
Everyone who has ever been to a party is bored with the standard jungle juice made with fruit punch and half-assed sliced fruit. Unfortunately, people rarely realize how tired they are of it, and those who host parties rarely know of any other option. Think about your favorite beverages or flavors, then head to the kitchen and experiment with a little mixology. The truth is, you don’t have to reinvent jungle juice, as long as it is different people will be excited and enthralled with your new jungle-juice flavor. The following are all excellent Party Lab innovated Recipes. Try one out, or invent your own!
Use alcohols that complement flavors
Booze is not Booze is not Booze. That is, all alcohols are not created equal. People tend to think that because you can dump a bunch of Everclear into some overpowering artificial fruit flavoring and not taste the alcohol, that it the is optimal way to make jungle juice. We at the Party Lab disagree.
People LIKE a little bit of bite and flavor when it comes to drinks. Good things come in moderation, however. SO, when making jungle-juice, choose alcohols that complement flavors. Rum goes well with tropical fruit juices and spice flavors, vodka and grain alcohol are good for adding alcohol flavorlessly. Whiskey goes well with citrus and spice, and tequila…well tequila is like rum, only its own flavor is a bit borish and can overwhelm. Tequila is best used only sparingly. As for various schnapps and liquors, just be mindful of your flavor combinations and you are sure to succeed.
Use Ice properly
Jungle-juice requires ice. However, people often misuse ice to terrible results. When it comes to jungle-juice it is best to add the ice yourself so that you don’t end up with people getting cubes on the floor or other places that are less than desirable. Adding the ice yourself has the potential to ruin your jungle juice, so be careful! First, consider how much ice you are adding in proportion to how much juice you have used. You don’t want to let it get to watery when the ice finally melts all the way! Second, be careful not to add the ice too early. Ice should be added to jungle-juice right as the party begins so it will be at its coolest, and less watery, as people drink it. Add it too early and all your ice might melt before guests even arrive!
Strive for Beer-Level Alcohol content
Jungle-juice tastes good. People like to indulge. With that understanding it should be obvious how dangerous it can be for jungle-juice to be too potent. People often have the misconception that jungle-juice should be extremely high-powered and the alcohol virtually un-tasteable. But this is not the case. You want people to be able to drink, enjoy drinking, and consume alcohol more slowly. This makes parties last longer, and contributes to a better party-atmosphere.
Adding Fruit
If you are going to add fruit, you need to A: Add a lot, B: Diversify, or C: Have a catch. What do I mean? A few slices of apple in jungle-juice is just obnoxious, and contributes nothing to the flavor or aesthetic. BUT, a lot of apple slices will probably add a good bit of flavor. If you have limited funding for fruit, diversify the color and type of fruit. The additional color will contribute to the aesthetic and the fruit flavors might actually complement each other. Finally, if you have neither diversity nor color, strive for intrigue. For instance, slicing up some Star-Fruit so there are little star-shaped slices floating on the surface of the jungle juice looks cool and exotic (especially if the juice is blue, it looks like a night sky!).
What NOT to DO
Make it too potent
Where does this get you? It lands you with people unconscious, vomit on your furniture and floor, raging hangovers, and people potentially injuring themselves at your liability. High potency is dangerous because people have no idea how much alcohol they are consuming. When people aren’t sure, they assume one of two things. Either the host wouldn’t make anything too potent and the juice is safe to drink in large quantities, OR they are superman and they can drink as much as they want because they are immune to jungle-juice. This is how people get hospitalized.
Use fruit and potent flavors to dull alcohol taste
If you can’t taste the booze then how can you know how much you’re drinking? OR worse yet, what if you rationalize that you aren’t drinking very much alcohol when actually you are drinking a lot. Why would you try and trick people into thinking they are drinking less than they are. Do you want to be scrubbing the remnants of round-trip french-fries off your walls, floor, and bathroom? Rule of thumb: trick people into thinking they are drinking MORE alcohol than they are. They will act stupider but be more sober, and less likely to fuck up your night.
Mix in energy drink or other substances
People should know what they are drinking. If they don’t they tend to make bad decisions. Besides, if you need help getting people to stay awake and amped at your parties then you are probably a shitty party thrower. Point is, if you put something into peoples bodies and they don’t know it, you are making yourself even more liable for any adverse reactions that might occur to them. Why put yourself in legal danger?
Mix too many different types of alcohol
Liquor before beer, and beer before liquor….all those sayings are wive’s tales in my opinion. Maybe psychologically if you start drinking liquor when you are already drunk, you are more likely to over drink, but then it isn’t the alcohols fault it is your own. HOWEVER, when you mix different alcohols I CAN guarantee that your hangover is going to be miserable. Some types of alcohol mix well together TRUE, but when you pour in Everclear, Rum, Beer, and Vodka, you are pretty much inviting your head to split open the next morning. Just control yourself.
Do not add beer
For my thoughts on beer in jungle-juice, please read this article.
Read More About Jungle Juice:
5 Reasons To Keep Beer Out Of Jungle Juice
Category: Drinks and Jungle Juice, Party Solutions
