The drink of the summer has arrived! The Piña Cocalada

What do you get when you combine a Cuba Liré and a Piña Colada? Well, you get the drink of the summer. Yes, this is the Piña Cocolada, and it's essentially the merging of two historically famous drinks from the Caribbean. Now, this is bound to be the most famous and popular drink of this summer, so expect to see it everywhere, from Instagram to TikTok, even Facebook and Snapchat, maybe even Vine, Foursquare, and possibly StumbleUpon. Now, this drink is not complicated, but there is an extra step here, so for those of you that want to make this right now, you can't do it, but your patience will be rewarded. Now, we simply cannot add Coca-Cola to a Piña Colada. It just doesn't work, but what we can do is add frozen Coca-Cola to a blended Piña Colada in place of the ice, and then it turns into this magical drink. Now, the easiest way for us to do this is to take a cheap ice tray. Most of them hold one ounce per ice cube, but double check yours. I'm going to triple check mine by filling up exactly 12 cubes, which equals 12 ounces, which equals a can Coca-Cola, and be cautious if your tray does not have a large lip, because this will expand in the freezer. Now, by the magic of television, we have frozen Coca-Cola ice cubes. Each cube is one ounce and about 30 grams, which is good to know. So, if you've already looked at the recipe here, or you just heard me mention we're using six ounces of Coca-Cola, you might be worried that there is just too much sugary Coca-Cola in this, and how is this going to end up? Well, don't worry, because this is going to be equally as terrible for you as a standard Piña Colada. It's going to have the same amount of sugar, at least for the Piña Colada that I make. Now, the rest of the ingredients are some lime juice, some pineapple juice, Coco Lopez, and this one's important. Not just the sugar from it, but the intensity of coconut flavor is hard to replicate on your own. Now, in this case, we want that intensity to stand up to the Coke. You can definitely make your own cream of coconut. I have a video on that using coconut milk and sugar, but that will get lost a little bit easier than just using Coco Lopez, which is stronger. Now, we also need some rum. I'm using Appleton 8, and a little bit of OFTD. The Appleton is a great complement to the Coca-Cola, because it has those baking spice notes and those orange peel notes, which I love about Appleton, and Coca-Cola. Now, last optional thing here is bitters. I'm using orange and cardamom, two dashes of each, but you could also use Angostura instead if you don't have those. This just adds a little bit to the complexity of this frozen blended drink. So, let's make a Piña Colada. I'm going to start with two dashes of orange bitters, two dashes of cardamom bitters, three-quarter ounces of lime juice, one ounce of pineapple juice, one ounce of Coca-Lopez cream of coconut, one and a half ounces of Appleton 8 rum, half an ounce of OFTD rum, six ounces of frozen Coca-Cola ice cubes, that's about 170 grams, a quarter cup of nugget or crushed ice. Then, I'm going to add in one-eighth a teaspoon of xanthan gum. This is optional, but will help keep your drink emulsified once it starts to melt, but don't use too much here or it gets gluey and kind of gross. This is just like they make drinks, like the frozen Frappuccinos at Starbucks. It's going to help your drink just stay together for a lot longer. My volume here is a little higher because I wanted to make sure I had extra in case I needed different pictures or whatever. So, you see my volume is a little bit different here. That is why. So, there you go. The frozen piña coca-lada, the official drink of summer 2026 and all future summers to come. If you want to pop the top off of one of your soda cans or whatever, you do need a special can opener to do it safely at least. They're not cheap. I think this is like 25 bucks, but I'll link to the one I use. If you're wanting to do this with other drinks, there's a bunch of drinks you can find like La Croix, but there's no better fitting container or glass than this one. So, let us try the frozen piña coca-lada. Cheers. Now, something that I should have picked up on because I think about these things all the time, but I didn't. My wife gave me this note, which I should have known, is that this feels more like a 7-Eleven Slurpee than a Slushie. The reason for that is the lime juice. So, we are getting some lime flavor, but there's so much else in here. It doesn't feel like Coca-Cola and lime, but the acidity is reminiscent of a Slurpee because not everyone realizes this. Slurpees are not the same as Slushies. Slurpees are carbonated. So, the actual vessel that they're in is carbonated and that adds the most important dimension to any sort of soda-based Slushie is having that carbonation. So, at 7-Eleven, you get the carbonation and carbonation does have some acidity, but even more so, the lime juice here adds a little bit back of the acidity that you kind of lose, and then it gives you that bright tingle on your palate that you get from carbonation. So, there are no extra bubbles in here. There's no carbonation in here. The soda is completely flat, but adding back in that acidity to a flat soda and blending it is more reminiscent of a 7-Eleven Slurpee, the branded Slurpees, forced carbonated Slurpees, than something like a Slushie from like a Ninja machine. Coca-Cola is a predominant flavor. There's no doubting that. And the pineapple juice, the cream of coconut, even the intensity of those rums is much more muted. So, it is a Coca-Cola forward cocktail. And I mean, I don't think it's going to work as good if you use another soda, whether it's a Cola like a Pepsi or you went crazy and did a Orange Crush. But I think that the template here does work. Cardamom, the orange bitters help just sort of play up those Coca-Cola flavors. So, you get a little bit more of the depth there from Coca-Cola that's not just more sweetness. But this is great. It's one of my favorite things that I've ever made and shared here that's my own, because it's just all the stuff that I like. You got great rum flavor, you got great Coca-Cola flavor, but it's not just rum and Coke. And you get like touches of the creaminess, the tropical flavors. You get something new, something different, something that I find to be endlessly delicious. And it doesn't hit you like a pina colada does, like that, you know, two, three ounces of Coco Lopez. Like it doesn't have that cloyingly sweetness or creaminess. So, it feels lighter and it feels like it's not as bad for you, but it is. So, there you go folks. The official drink of the summer. This summer and every other summer to come. It's the Pina Cocolada. It's a Cuba Libre. It's a rum and Coke and lime with a pina colada. These things just work together. Can't explain it. It just, it just works. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a like below. If you make this, please let me know in the comments or tag me on Instagram so I can share it as well. Otherwise, if you want to support this channel more, go check out my Patreon page and I will see you on the next one.