A quick lime and triple sec cocktail you can make at home

December 25, 2025

This is the drink I'd make when people turn up and nobody wants to faff about, because it's just a spirit and a triple sec with lime squeezed into it, and it's in your hand in about 5 minutes with nothing more than a glass and a knife.

Where the triple sec comes from

Still Spirits Triple Sec is a 50ml liqueur flavouring, the dry orange one that goes into a margarita or a cosmopolitan. On its own it isn't a drink. You make it up into a liqueur on a neutral spirit with a sweetener, and the pack tells you what goes in and how much, so follow that rather than a number off a forum. Once it's made up it keeps in the cupboard, and that's the bottle you're pouring from here.

Making it up on a bought neutral spirit, and vodka from the bottle shop is fine, involves no distilling and needs no licence. Distilling your own base is a different matter and needs an excise manufacturer licence from the ATO, which is a federal rule, so it's the same answer wherever you live.

The drink

Pour about 30ml of vodka or white rum into a short glass over ice with about 15ml of your triple sec, then squeeze half a lime over the top and give it a stir. If it's a bit sharp for you, a touch more triple sec brings it round, and if it's too sweet, it wants more lime.

Ways to change it up

Long and fizzy. Top it up with soda water in a tall glass and it turns into a spritz you can sip through a hot afternoon.
Lemon instead of lime. Whatever's in the fruit bowl works, and lemon makes it a little softer.
A sugared rim. Run the spent lime round the rim and dip it in caster sugar if you want it to look like it came from a bar.
Tequila for the base. Swap the vodka for tequila and you're most of the way to a margarita.

Shop related products

Still Spirits Triple Sec Liqueur essence 50ml. The orange liqueur this drink is built on.
Edwards Essences Kwontro Orange Essence. Another orange liqueur flavouring to try against it.
Edwards Essences White Rum Essence. If you'd rather a white rum base than vodka.
Still Spirits Tequila Essence 50ML. For the margarita version.

Did you know we also stock Samuel Willard's Triple Sec premix and 1125ml spirit bottles in the shop. They're not on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.