Guava Cooler Tequila Cocktail Recipe - Tropical and Refreshing!

This guava tequila cocktail is made with guava nectar, triple sec, and a mix of fruit juices for a refreshing, tropical take on happy hour!

This guava tequila cocktail is a copycat recipe that we created based on the Guava Cooler at The Cabin Restaurant in White Plains, New York.

My husband said the location isn't actually White Plains - it's more like Elmsford, but their website (and Google Maps) say White Plains. So I'm leaving it at that.

This isn't the first restaurant copycat cocktail recipe that me and my husband have worked on. This Watermelon Sugar High Tequila Cocktail and these Passionfruit Margaritas are also fantastic choices.

Grab a glass and a plate of taquitos and let's dig in. Cheers!

Jump To:

• 🧡 Why we love this recipe
• 📝 Ingredients
• 🥃 Ingredient spotlight: tequila
• 📌 Guava nectar vs. guava juice
• ✅ How to make this recipe
• 🍊 Tips for juicing citrus
• 🔪 Equipment
• 📖 Recipe

🧡 Why we love this recipe

• The combination of fruit in this Guava Cooler recipe is really unique and seriously delicious.
• It's a great way to use tequila and triple sec outside of a traditional margarita.
• Making cocktails at home is much more budget-friendly than ordering them when you're out and about.
• Guava nectar gives this cocktail a beautiful color!

📝 Ingredients

Here's everything you need to make this Guava Cooler cocktail (see recipe card below for ingredient amounts and full directions):

• Freshly squeezed lime juice
• Freshly squeezed grapefruit juice (we love this large citrus squeezer to help w that)
• Pineapple juice
• Guava nectar
• Triple sec
• Tequila blanco (check out the spotlight box below for more info about various types of tequila!)

📌 Guava nectar vs. guava juice

This guava cocktail recipe calls for guava nectar. Guava nectar is a product made from the pulp that comes from crushed fresh guava.

Fruit nectars are diluted with water and additional ingredients and/or sweeteners. They are often more affordable and readily available than pure fruit juices, especially when it comes to tropical fruit.

You can often find guava nectar sold in cartons in the Mexican or Latin food aisle at the grocery store.

There's some great info on the differences between juice and nectar in this article over at The Daring Kitchen.

✅ How to make this recipe

This recipe comes together really quickly. We're using a mix of fresh and store-bought juices here. Adding the ingredients to your cocktail shaker in order of least expensive to most will help ensure you don't waste any of the "good stuff" if you accidentally goof up the measurements.

1. Add a king cube (a large ice cube also known as an "agitator cube") or several normal-sized ice cubes to your cocktail shaker.
2. Pour in your juices, guava nectar, triple sec, and tequila, and shake well.
3. Strain and pour in a highball glass filled with ice. Garnish with a lime wedge and grapefruit twist, if desired.

See recipe card below for full instructions.

🍊 Tips for juicing citrus

This recipe calls for fresh grapefruit juice, which you can absolutely squeeze by hand if needed. If you juice a lot of oranges or grapefruit, you may want to look into getting a large citrus squeezer like the one pictured above.

This is much larger than the standard lemon squeezer that can handle lemons and limes. The larger squeezer can also juice smaller citrus fruits, so if you only want to buy one gadget, I'd recommend that one.

I've mentioned this tip in my virtual cooking classes before, but I still share it every time just in case anyone doesn't know about it...

When you're putting halved citrus fruit into one of these squeezer-style juicers, you want to put the flat, cut side down into the tool.

When I first used a squeezer I'd put it curved side-down to match the arch of the tool. But you want to do the opposite - that allows the squeezer to press down into the fruit, really getting all that juice out of the fruit.

Another quick tip is that if you want to make a citrus twist garnish, use a vegetable peeler or swivel peeler (my current favorite) before you cut into your fruit.

Once you've grabbed some strips of zest, go ahead and juice that wonky-looking fruit.

We even sometimes grab zest from fruit and then pop the rest of the fruit into a stasher bag in the fridge if we only need the zest.

🔪 Equipment

Aside from the aforementioned gear, there are a few things that will help make your cocktail mixing go much more smoothly.

• A jigger for measuring your ingredients.
• A cocktail shaker for mixing everything together.
• King cube ice cube tray (if you want to make large ice cubes)
• Cocktail picks or bamboo skewers for holding garnishes (I used these arrow cocktail picks for these photos)
• A Hawthorne strainer if your shaker doesn't have a built-in strainer.

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📖 Recipe

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