I am a lazy person, which means I need a steady stream of easy-to-make, but not too boozy cocktails to keep me calm. Gin and tonic works for a bit, but guzzling gin, no matter how diluted, can get one into trouble.

If you took part in the recent discourse — or shall we say “spritzcourse” — surrounding a certain beverage, you now know that some people do not enjoy the Aperol spritz, and feel it “drinks like a Capri Sun after soccer practice on a hot day”, but “not in a good way”.

If your keen on a few aged tequila shots today, consider ditching the line and salt with those shots for a grapefruit with a dusting of cinnamon instead.

Some pretty decent recipes can be found on the backs of boxes, bottles, cans and other packaging, and the piña colada recipe that’s printed on cans La Preferida cream of coconut is a good example of the genre.

I am not against simply sipping on an amaro or five, as they are usually so full of flavour that they don’t need much. I also enjoy them with a little carbonated water. But my amaro-focused worldview sometimes makes me forget that these sweet and herbal little numbers go great in full-fledged cocktails, particularly those made with darker spirits.

If my trip to Denmark taught me anything about alcohol, it’s that I’m not drinking enough gin & tonics. If it taught me a second thing, it’s that I’m definitely not drinking enough aquavit. And if it (somehow) managed to teach me yet another thing, it would be that I should have been combining these two drinks quite some time ago.

Jam is an excellent cocktail ingredient. It’s also very sticky, which means getting those last seemingly insignificant bits out of the jam jar requires some creative problem solving. Luckily, ethanol is quite the solvent.

Though pumpkin spice takes America by storm every autumn, the famous combination of cinnamon, cloves and ginger is not so much a thing in Australia. Fortunately, Australians don't have to miss out on spicy autumn treats, as any recipe that uses pumpkin spice works just as well with five spice powder.

“Something and Coke” barely qualify as cocktails. But you can’t deny that they are delicious, particularly when you pair cola with a complex, herbaceous liqueur such as my good friend Cynar.

Happy weekend, everyone, and welcome back to 3-Ingredient Happy Hour, the weekly drink column featuring super simple yet delicious libations. This week we’re getting sauced with one of my favourite autumnal flavours — cranberry.

Though I’ve always claimed to hate the heat and love the cold, living somewhere with a barely-real winter and only the tiniest bit of snow has taught me that I just don’t like environmental extremes of any kind.

Though I love introducing you all to new and exciting bottles, my bar cart is rapidly filling up, so I’ve been trying to find new and exciting ways to use up the alcohol I already have. My process for doing so is pretty advanced: I google random combinations of the ethanol I own until I find something that sounds good.

Last weekend, Sunday lived up to its name, and I was able to enjoy a few cocktails in a sunny cocktail bar in southeast Portland. I started with a coconut gin negroni and, while sipping on that, a sassy little number with Squirt (one of my favourite sodas as a youth) caught my eye.

Happy weekend, and welcome back to 3-Ingredient Happy Hour, the weekly drink column featuring super simple yet delicious libations. This week we are shedding our summer skins and easing into cooler weather with extremely ripe figs and spicy ginger.

The humble, bog-dwelling cranberry may be the most underutilised seasonal ingredient of all time. I mean no disrespect to cranberry sauce when I say this, but there's so much more you can do with these tart little nuggets than cook them in sugar water until they collapse.

This week, while rearranging my bar cart, I rediscovered a bottle of cachaça, which I had only ever used to make the iconic caipirinha. It’s a great drink, but I hate monotony, even in my cocktails, which led to me searching the internet for other, non-caipirinha uses for the Brazilian sugar cane spirit.

News is usually bad, but today, the news is good. The news is so good, in fact, that I feel like drinking about it, and I would like to invite you all to join me. To celebrate this good feeling coursing through my body due to the good news, I’m mixing up a strong but luxurious whiskey-based cocktail which I am calling—unsurprisingly—“The Good News.”

The grocery store is an inspiring place, particularly the produce aisle. No matter what I have on my list, I make sure to take a few minutes to leisurely browse the fruits, vegetables and fungi, just to see if anyone pops out to say “hello”.

This week, I stumbled upon a large, sunny, yellow boi, simply named “cocktail citrus”. My mission was clear.

Your snobby cocktail friend may fly into a tizzy (or worse, a lecture) at the utterance of “shaken, not stirred” but, though their feelings on shaken martinis are valid, shaking a cocktail can be good, actually.