Drinks

Incredible gin cocktails

Whether you’re celebrating getting to Friday with the ultimate G&T, looking to impress your dinner party guests with a classic aperitif, or fancy a warming festive tipple by the fire, we have a quick and easy gin cocktail recipe for every occasion.

Useful cocktail making kit

Cocktail Glasses

Sumptuous summer recipes

In fact, when you have these summer recipes up your sleeve, there’s always something to celebrate, come rain or shine. So get the drinks chilling, and tuck into our sunshine-filled summer recipes.

How to use baked apricots

You can enjoy them as they are with yoghurt or ice cream, turn them into a delicious breakfast or dessert, or even a summer cocktail!

Store-cupboard cocktails

A spoonful of jam will add a fruity twist to a classic

Warming winter drinks ideas

Make way for cups of steaming hot chocolate, flasks of mulled wine and glasses of hot and spicy cocktails as the winter weather moves in. These are our favourite winter drinks recipes to keep you cosy all season long.

Beer and food matching

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Sugar and spice and all things iced

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Cocktails for an Indian summer

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Dainty I ain’t: beer pairing at Le Gavroche

Recently the LetThereBeBeer campaign had been making rather obvious suggestions for food and beer pairing, so when they invited me to Le Gavroche it seemed a little at odds with their previous output. For example, in one ‘advertorial’ their frontman Tim Lovejoy did a world beers pairing session in a Thai restaurant and offered up Heineken and Cobra! I was therefore keen to know more of what they stood for.

Cooking with beer

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Maltese wine – blessed by ancient gods

Meridiana Wine Estate, however, lies verdant in the shadow of the incredibly beautiful and unspoiled ancient capital of Malta, Mdina. This estate has harnessed the soils and climate it has been blessed with to maximum effect.

Chocolate and beer: a sweet surprise

It’s fair to say that as we stood in Rococo’s latest chocolate shop in Marylebone there was some scepticism in the air. No one had ever matched beer and chocolate before. When you're hankering for something sweet, reaching for a beer to go with it feels counter intuitive.

How to make sloe gin

When are sloes in season?

Drip-filter coffee and the pour-over method

By Merlin Jobst

Our best beers for Christmas

For me, the best part of Christmas is Christmas Day evening, when my family has given up forcing me to play board games, I’ve demolished a plate of leftover turkey rolls, and my Dad’s fallen asleep with his Christmas hat falling over his eyes.

Union Coffee – a roast for winter

By Merlin Jobst

Battle of the bubbles

Don’t fear, the simple guide to picking your perfect sparkling tipple is here.

New beer trends for 2014

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How beer is made

I am forever being asked how beer is made. My usual reply is “Magic”.

Valentine's food & wine

I’ve matched some great Jamie recipes with some gorgeous wines to make your evening in all the better.

Cooking with beer – Aussie lamb shoulder

Rich Keam

Baking bread with beer

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Irish coffee for St Patrick’s Day

The Irish coffee hasn’t been around long – it didn’t even make an appearance in Irish history until 1943 when, as the widely-accepted story goes, a flight from Shannon Airport was cancelled and a certain Joe Sheridan, a local head chef, decided to comfort the freezing passengers by adding whisky to the coffee he was serving them. Upon being asked if they were drinking "Brazilian" coffee, Sheridan announced that it was, in fact, Irish.

The best Australian wine

Ask my dad what wine he’d like in a restaurant and he’ll proudly announce “ABC” (Anything but Chardonnay). This phrase, for the younger readers out there, is a hangover from a time in the 1980s when New World wine-makers were churning out over-ripe, oak-sodden wines at blistering speed and attempting to pump them into every crevice of the globe.

Cooking with Cocktails: Sorted

We like to put our own twist on most things at Sorted and cocktails are no exception. We do like a drink but we might like our food a little bit more… or do we? If you just can’t decide between the two there is a solution; just combine them!

Homemade soda: honey clementine fizz

With muddy hands and feet, we’re glad to be celebrating spring; but with all of that working and playing, a refreshing cool-down is frequently in order. Water always does the job, but sometimes we need a little something more. That’s when we break out the clementines, get juicing, and make our favourite Honey Clementine Fizz.

Beer cocktails: mix it up

We all know what a spritz is - we’ll happily pour Champagne and Prosecco into our cocktails to give it a bit of dryness and fizz. It’s classy, it’s cool, but it’s a slightly expensive way to drink.

How to make the Oliver’s Twist cocktail

It’s unsurprising, then, that they’d be guests of honour in his signature cocktail,

Happy hour: cocktail jargon 101

Great countries, events and people have been immortalised by having a boozy concoction named after them. More than just the invention of the drinks, I’ve always admired the talented folks who conjure up the names… Fuzzy navel, anyone?!

Wine cocktails: Jay’s Last Say

To celebrate the launch of Drinks Tube, I’ve teamed up with the head bartender from Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, Jay, to create a cocktail that combines Barcardi’s famous white rum with my favourite tipple; wine (or, more specifically, Prosecco). For more on sparkling wines, check out my

Incredible boozy iced tea

I am not a big drinker, but I do enjoy a cool beer on a really hot day and a well-made cocktail on a special occasion. There is something about a large jug of punch or iced tea that gets people talking, and I like to serve this when guests arrive. I don’t think you need several spirits to create an exotic concoction – I prefer to use a single spirit with syrups and teas adding flavour to the drink. I tend to serve warmer, spicier punches in the colder months and fruity flowery chilled teas when the sun is out.

Homemade citrus-infused vodka

Words and recipe by

Two perfect Easter wines

Let’s keep this simple; I won’t recommend specific wines for Easter, because there are so many wonderful budget bottles on the supermarket and offy shelves. Instead, I’m going to gently roll two grape varieties in your direction – namely pinot noir and Riesling – for your Easter lunch, which is of the great foodie celebrations of the year.

Gasping for a proper cuppa in India

I'm almost halfway across India now, and surprisingly I'm barely touching caffeine at all. Being a regular coffee junkie and a ferocious consumer of pint-sized cups of tea at any chance I get, this realisation has come as a shock to me.

Tropical cocktails: Lychee mojito

When the sun comes out, everyone gets a little overexcited in the UK. Suddenly it's all about “alfresco” dining, or sipping on something a little tropical to get you in the mood for warmer months.