Layered Drink DoozyVintage, Paint, and more....

Layered Drink Doozy

Sarah sent us in this 4th of July Mocktail Pinstrosity. I've seen this idea a number of times, and even tried a variation of it myself a while back.

The Original Pin

http://blogs.babycenter.com/life_and_home/a-patriotic-mocktail-for-the-kids/

Sarah says, "I was all kinds of excited to try this awesome pin for our 4th of July celebration festivities! What would be more festive than a drink that resembles our nations's flag? So a few days before, I bought my fruit punch, Gatorade and Diet Sprite and out them right in the fridge so they would be nice and cold! The blog explained that the different layers came from the sugar content... the parts with the most sugar would stay on the bottom and the part with the least amount of sugar would stay on top. The instructions said to fill your glass 1/3 full of ice and pour the fruit punch to almost the top of the ice. Following that, fill your glass with 1/3 more ice then to carefully pour the blue Gatorade on top; finally, top the glass off with 1/3 more with ice and carefully pour Diet Sprite on top. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong"

The Pinstrosity

Mmmmm....

"My husband and I tried multiple times with no luck. We tried everything from pouring differently to laying the ice in different ways. The top layer (Diet Sprite) did, in fact, separate from the rest of the drink, but we definitely did NOT see the wonderful blue and red that I was hoping for. The project ended leaving me disappointed with a ton of a fruit punch concoction left to drink."

I can feel Sarah's disappointment through the email. I know I would have been highly disappointed. I've done some looking around (and some far reaches back to my college chemistry classes) and I have a few ideas of how to help this out.

The separation of layers comes from the density of each drink, and the sugar content of the drinks affects the densities. You have to make sure to have good variations in your sugar content to get this to work just right. The pin Sarah used called for fruit punch and blue gatorade for two of the layers, but a little more specific information is needed. If your fruit punch isn't the thick fruit punch, it's not going to work so well. The gatorade and the punch need to differ in densities (or thicknesses if you want to think of it that way). I looked up some other recipes and found a more specific ingredient list for you:

Sobe Pina Colada for the white
Gatorade Fruit Punch for the red
G2 Blueberry-Pomegranate for the blue.

And here's the process I'm reading in many posts:

Fill the glass all the way full with ice (not just the 1/3) and pour in your thickest drink first (using the above ingredient list, that'd be the Pina Colada Sobe).
Slowly, pour in the next drink through the ice, and follow up with the last drink (again slowly!).

Pouring slowly through the ice will help to reduce mixing of the layers (although some mixing will occur).

Here are some great examples using this exact recipe and method!