36 Best Brunch Cocktails
When you think brunch cocktails, you think of Mimosas, the Bloody Mary, coffee drinks, champagne drinks and other lighter weight cocktails. These are great to pair with food, and the fact that they’re lightweight means no hangovers.
Brunch is a wonderful meal to enjoy, and the menu can range from light to heavy. It’s supposed to hold you until dinner, so it tends to be a rich meal.
These delicious drinks were chosen to suit that kind of meal. You don’t want a drink that’s too heavy or strong. You want drinks with some sparkle, or a heavy fruit garnish, or coffee.
And that’s what you’ll find in this list. Drinks that feature a little less of the hard liquor, and more of the fruit juice, coffee and champagne.
Best Brunch Cocktail Recipes
The classic Bloody Mary recipe blends vodka with tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, Tobasco, lemon juice and celery salt. This simple recipe tastes wonderful, but you can add more Tobasco if you want it hotter.
The Butterscotch Coffee Cocktail blends two liqueurs with a full serving of hot coffee. It's a fairly lightweight drink that's a great way to wake up in the morning or at brunch.
The Mimosa is a classic brunch cocktail, but it's also wonderful for celebrations and parties. Most people know it includes orange juice and champagne, but it also has a little bit of orange liqueur which adds to the flavor.
Irish Coffee is one of the simplest and oldest recipes for a coffee drink. It blends coffee with Irish whiskey and either sugar or Irish cream. It's a wonderfully bittersweet hot cocktail that goes well with a nice filling brunch.
The honey-vanilla flavor in this delicious cocktail is subtle. It comes from Licor 43, a Spanish liqueur that tastes like honey and vanilla with citrus.
Features Lillet Rose and prosecco along with an unexpected lavender syrup. This one will surprise you.
The Orange Blossom cocktail recipe blends gin and orange juice with orange liqueur, lime juice and grenadine. It's a lightly sweet and fruity drink that would be great for brunch.
The Tequila Sunrise is a classic cocktail recipe blending grenadine with tequila and orange juice. It has a beautiful sunrise effect. The flavor is orange and berry, with notes from whatever tequila you use.
The classic Mojito cocktail blends rum with sugar, mint, lime and carbonated water. It's a tasty, refreshing drink - sort of a carbonated limeade with a kick. And it's never too early in the day for this one.
The Vodka Cranberry is a very simple drink to make, but it's so delicious. With tart cranberry and lime, and a dash of sweet orange juice, it's great for an evening out. But it's equally at home with brunch.
When you want champagne, but it doesn't have the kick you want, you can always go for the French 75 cocktail. It's a champagne, gin and lemon drink with kick. Great way to use up leftover champagne.
The Rasmaretto drink recipe blends sweet almond, raspberry and lemon
flavors into a surprisingly wonderful combination. The healthy dose of
lemonade makes it palatable to most anyone.
The Screwdriver, with vodka and orange juice, is one of the simplest cocktails you could possibly mix, which may be part of its enduring popularity.
The Almond Chocolate Coffee cocktail blends amaretto, creme de cacao and hot coffee. The result is just what the name implies – an almond chocolate coffee drink that’s hard to resist.
The Mojito Diablo mixes tequila with creme de cassis, mint, lime, brown sugar and 7-Up. The resulting taste is a mint-lime-berry fusion with an underlying richness from the brown sugar.
The Midori Mimosa is a very simple drink blending Midori with champagne and just a touch of lemon juice and simple syrup. It's a fresh-tasting cocktail that's perfect for brunch.
The Spanish Coffee is a coffee cocktail that features Licor 43, an uncommon liqueur that tastes of vanilla and spice, with distant hints of citrus. It's made with hot coffee and is great for breakfast or midmorning get-togethers.
The Malibu Driver is one of the simplest cocktail recipes out there, with just two ingredients: Malibu coconut rum and orange juice. Because it includes two ounces of the coconut rum, that flavor balances the sweet-tartness of the orange juice, and you get a flavor that's mellow with no rough edges.
The China Blue gets its color like so many blue drinks – from blue curacao. But it gets a very special flavor from the lychee liqueur. The taste of lychee is sweet and slightly flowery and rather delicate. This contrasts beautifully with the tartness of the grapefruit juice and the sweet-tart of the orange from the curacao.
The Kiss on the Lips drink is a delicious mango, peach and berry taste sensation, blended with ice to keep it cool.
The delicious Sea Breeze drink recipe features vodka, cranberry and grapefruit juice. It's a refreshing cocktail with just the right balance of sweet and tart.
The Fairy Belle Cocktail is a pink, slightly creamy or frothy drink, and the grenadine makes it pretty sweet. In other words, it's just what you might have imagined from the name.
The AbFab cocktail, or “Stoli-Bolli”, came from an episode of Absolutely Fabulous, in which Patsy and Edina kind of make it up on the fly. It’s extremely simple – just vodka-spiked champagne, really.
The Cafe D’Amour is an exciting cocktail. Not only does it involve coffee, cinnamon and cognac, but you light the freakin’ brandy on fire at one point in the preparation. Cocktails + open flames = fun times for all. Plus, if you use turbinado sugar for the rim, it’s golden.
The Vodka Sunrise cocktail is just like the Tequila Sunrise, but with vodka in place of the tequila. That makes it a nice alternative for Tequila Sunrise lovers, and a great replacement for those who don't like tequila.
The Caffeini Martini sounds a lot like the Espresso Martini, but aside from the espresso, it's actually pretty different. It blends Kahlua with chocolate and butterscotch liqueur, then adds some milk for creaminess. This makes it a rich, sweetened coffee drink with a kick.
The Crystal Cranberry is very smooth and drinkable – a nice choice for light drinkers who aren’t really used to the taste of alcohol. But it also suits experienced drinkers. It’s tasty without being full of sweet liqueurs or simple sugar.
The Strawberry Sombrero is a reddish pink creamy cocktail that blends the flavors of coffee, milk, and strawberry. Think of it like a strawberry coffee with cream.
The Coffee Nudge is a fun hot coffee based cocktail. It features dark creme de cacao, Kahlua, and brandy.
The Executive Sunrise is sort of a riff on the Tequila Sunrise. You upgrade the white tequila to gold tequila, and instead of grenadine for the sunrise effect, you use creme de cassis.
This is a fairly strong drink, but with four ounces of fruit juice, it really can work as a brunch drink. It's a tequila cocktail that features Midori and white grapefruit juice.
The Bellini is one of the simplest champagne cocktails out there, with just two ingredients. It blends delicious peach puree with champagne for a wonderful, lightly fruity flavor. I recommend a Prosecco or dry champagne, but you can use any champagne you like.
The Champagne Fizz cocktail is a champagne based cocktail, but it’s not as lightweight as most of them. It boasts a full serving of gin along with a few other ingredients.
The Percolator is a cold coffee-based cocktail that goes down smooth while it wakes you up. It’s great as a breakfast or brunch cocktail. Just don’t serve it at a party where you’re hoping everyone will leave in a timely manner – or if you do, make the coffee decaf.
There are a couple of variations on the Golden Dawn. It always involves orange juice and either peach or apricot brandy or liqueur with gin. Another recipe includes Calvados, a brandy made from apples. Whichever recipe you use, the Golden Dawn is a tart, fruity martini.
Sangria works for brunch because it's chock full of fruit. There's no single hard and fast recipe, but this one will get you started.
Filed in:
Last Updated:
More Like This
