Easy Peasy Punch Guide

My good buddy Joel brought up an issue to me the other week - he wanted a cocktail for his wedding reception, but didn’t want to bog down the catering bartenders with having to make them. Enter the punch bowl!

Punch is a great go-to for any occasion where you’d like a cocktail served, but don’t necessarily want drinks being shaken or stirred all night. I thought it’d be useful to share the formula I use to calculate punch servings, and how to batch.

We begin with the easy rhyme for ratios - One of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak. For this punch, the sour ingredient is a mixture of lemon and lime juice, the sweet is a hibiscus syrup, the strong will be gin, and the weak, mineral water, for length and effervescence.

In Joel’s case, the number of attendees is 120. His punch will only be served at the cocktail hour, and we wanted to keep it light, so we chose a 1.25oz serving of liquor as our basis, at one serving per guest (allowing for the option of the punch to run out, considering beer and wine service as well).

This puts our requirement for the gin at 1.25 ([serving of liquor] * 120 [number of guests]) * 1 (servings per guest). The end result is that we’ll need 150oz of gin in order to serve 120 guests. From then, it’s a little simple math to fill out the rest of the equation.

• 50oz Citrus juice (one of sour)

• 100oz Hibiscus syrup (two of sweet)

• 150oz Dry Gin (three of strong)

• 200oz mineral water (four of weak)

When it comes time to batch and sort the ingredients, I will probably set them in containers to fit 32 oz (~1 liter) of gin at a time - this way at the wedding, the bartenders can easily batch the drink and refill as necessary.

Consider this equation the next time you need a quick and easy drink idea for your next gathering!