As I’ve mentioned here about 20,000 times, my approach to Drink of the Week is that these are reasonably quick and easy to make cocktails for the home, not major DIY projects. While I love the companies that send me free drinks and (for the most part) really good cocktails, if a recipe calls for, say, a ginger-asparagus-truffle reduction syrup, I’ll skip it. If it demands that I use freshly ground nutmeg, I’ll very likely just stick with the store-bought pre-ground stuff, thank you very much. In other words, I’m kind of lazy and I think you might be, too!

So, when I saw that today’s recipe called for “fresh lemonade,” my heart sank. The Hornitos Tequila people have been very generous to me, both in terms of freebies and in sending me good-to-superb recipes to share with all of you, and I trust them. Also, I am a big believer in the cocktailian ethos that demands fresh juices as much as possible. (Yes, sour mix is a crime against both God and man. You can quote me on that.) I really wanted to do this recipe right, but I just didn’t feel like making my own lemonade.

I decided to get tough with myself. After all, lemonade is just lemon juice, sugar and water. How hard could it be to simply make a mini-lemonade and add it to the drink? Well, it really wasn’t difficult at all, but all I know is that when I substituted the 1 1/2 ounces of fresh lemonade in today’s recipe with 1/2 ounce of lemon juice, a tablespoon of sugar and an ounce of additional water, the mixed drink that resulted was kind of disappointing. A bit too sweet, perhaps. Way too sweet? Maybe. I’ve never made lemonade before and my poor math skills were not helping in terms of trying to make a very small amount of the stuff based on the many recipes I found online.

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