Are you looking for easy low carb cocktails to make this summer?

These quick keto cocktails can be made in under a minute, with only 3 ingredients. 

When I started the keto diet a few years ago there weren’t too many options for premixed keto-friendly alcoholic drinks.

While I had hoped to be able to find some low carb wine coolers, I had no luck.

Low carb coolers just didn’t exist.

When it came to keto mixed drinks to order at a bar, my go-to was a whiskey or rum with diet coke. 

But at home, what I really wanted was a keto cooler to sit outside and relax with on a warm summer night.

So, since the now popular vodka sodas weren’t around back then, I decided to come up with my own keto-friendly cocktails.

What I ended up with was this no-carb cocktail that is easy and quick to make.

Keto Alcoholic Drinks

Worrying about messing up your diet with a night out is common on most other diets.

But that is one of the things that made keto such a sustainable diet for me. 

You can still drink alcohol.

In the 9 months I followed keto, and lost 30 pounds without giving up alcohol, I mostly stuck to just drinking a couple of glasses of wine at night.  But on those days that I went a bit higher with my carbs, I needed some other keto alcohol options.

While some sweeter wines may be a little too high in carbs for keto, dry wines are safe with only 2-4 grams of carbs per serving. 

But, does alcohol take you out of ketosis?

As long as you stick to low or no-carb alcohol, it shouldn’t have any effects on ketosis.

But, that doesn’t give you a free pass to go on a drinking binge every night. 

Since your body views alcohol as a toxin, it will immediately switch to focusing all its efforts on processing it, using the alcohol as fuel instead of fats.

While alcohol won’t affect ketosis, it can slow down your weight loss progress.

So, what are the lowest carb alcoholic drinks?

Take a look at the Diet Doctors Alcohol Guide to see some of the best and worst traditional alcoholic drinks for keto.

Low Carb Cocktails

What is the lowest carb alcohol?

With 0 grams of carbs, hard liquors (like vodka, rum, gin, whiskey, and tequila) are the best for making keto-friendly alcohol drinks.  Just make sure you stick to the unflavored ones.

But, what cocktails can I have on keto?

While traditional recipes for most cocktails aren’t keto-friendly, with some creativity you can swap out the ingredients for keto-friendly ones and make just about any cocktail keto.

Take this recipe for mojitos. 

To make it a keto mojito all you need to do is swap out the 4 tablespoons of sugar for 4 tablespoons of Swerve or another keto-friendly sweetener.

What if one of the ingredients is a flavored (and sugar-filled) liqueur?

Well, with a bit of creativity you can even make your own flavored liqueurs to use in keto cocktails.

Does a cinnamon roll cocktail sound good to you?

Swap out the Fireball for this homemade keto cinnamon whiskey, replace the cream soda with diet or Zevia cream soda and make some of this keto whipped cream. 

Now you have a keto cinnamon roll cocktail.

How to Make Simple Keto Cocktails

While making keto versions of traditional cocktails isn’t that hard, if you’re like me and just want a quick keto cocktail this MiO cocktail will be perfect for you.

The Alcohol

When I first decided to make a keto cocktail, I used vodka. 

After trying it out a few times, I decided to swap the vodka for some Bacardi white rum.

While both liquors make for a yummy keto cocktail, I prefer it with the white rum. 

Either way, both vodka and white rum have zero carbs and are great alcohols for making a zero-carb cocktail.

Flavor

What makes this recipe so easy, is all you need to flavor it is a squirt of some 0 carb MiO water enhancer.  With all the flavor options available, you can come up with all kinds of low carb cocktails. 

You can even use them to try to replicate some traditional cocktails.

Initially I tried to find a way to make a keto version of an old favorite of mine Sex on the Beach. The closest I could come up with was mixing the Orange Tangerine, Cranberry Raspberry, and Mango Peach. Not quite a Sex on the Beach, but it was still delicious.

Craving a screwdriver?

Use the orange-tangerine MiO.

Do you miss Mike’s Hard Lemonade?

Try the lemonade or the blueberry lemonade flavor.

Keto Long Island Ice Tea?

Maybe the Sweet Tea flavor will work.

While the MiO brand has a lot of flavor choices, it is sweetened with sucralose.  If you are avoiding artificial sweeteners, water enhancers like Stur or SweetLeaf Water Drops (both sweetened with stevia) work well too. 

Mixer

The mixers in most traditional cocktails are full of carbs.

The obvious first choice for a low carb cocktail would be diet soda, so for my first attempt at making a quick keto cocktail, I used lemon-lime Zevia.

On my second try, I realized I didn’t need the lemon-lime flavor, or the sweetness from the soda, all I needed was something to make it fizzy. 

So, I swapped it out for plain old club soda.

The popularity of the keto diet has led to some much better choices for keto alcohol, like the cans of vodka sodas that are now so easy to find. 

While I have tried a few of them out, with a squirt of liquid stevia to make them a bit sweeter, this low carb cocktail is still my go-to for a summer evening drink.

Give it a try and let me know what you think on my Facebook post.  Don’t forget to  follow me on Facebook to see what other keto recipes I come up with what else I learn on my journey to live a healthier and happier life.

What’s your favorite keto cocktail?  Do you have any other keto-friendly alcohol drink recipes?