Best Big Batch Cocktails Made with Rum

Rum is one of the best party liquors you can buy. It gets people drunk fast, works well with cocktails, and basically helped invent the whole tiki party movement that you end up seeing every summer. It's sweet enough to work for a dessert drink, but strong enough to work in aperitif cocktails.

That being said, there is a problem with rum cocktails that most party planners often will notice during their first party.

But, the problem most party planners have isn't with rum itself; it's with the amount of time it takes to make a bunch of cocktails for every guest at the shindig. It takes a long time to muddle mint for mojitos, or wash glasses for Sazeracs.

All that time takes away from the time you could be spending chatting with guests, prepping food, or even just accepting compliments from others. If you want to cut down on time, you will need to make big batch cocktails that can be served to multiple people at the same time.

Thankfully, rum is great for big batch drinks. Here are some of the best big batch cocktails made with rum — and advice on each one.

Cider Rum Punch

Cider Rum Punch is one of the best big batch cocktails made with rum for any time of the year. However, it's most commonly enjoyed during the fall and winter — often alongside a slice of pumpkin or apple pie.

Chances are that you've probably had a cup of this at one point or another. When chilled, it's sweet and refreshing with a smoky finish. When it's served hot, it warms your bones in a way that staves off Jack Frost in a pinch.

This recipe for warmed Cider Rum Punch is an amazing way to kick off your next Christmas party. However, if you want to drink it cold, by all means, do so. It'll taste just as great.

Ginger Beer-Pineapple Rum Punch

Apples and cinnamon are great for winter, but they don't typically work well with summer treats. That's why many of the best big batch cocktails made with rum involves tropical flavors like ginger beer, coconut, and pineapple.

A major problem that many big batch rum cocktails have is that they tend to be too sweet and too heavy. This can leave guests feeling sick, or just mildly grossed out by the taste of the cocktail. For many bartenders, summer rum cocktails are hard to nail down, primarily because of how sweet they tend to be.

The key to having a rum punch that tastes good without being overly sweet is to balance it with a little fizz — or to add a some ice to balance out the heaviness of coconut milk.

This recipe for Ginger Beer-Pineapple Rum Punch helps keep the tropical flavors alive for your next tiki bash, but also doesn't taste like diabetes. Better still, it's relatively low in calories, so you can also have dieting guests partake without too much guilt.

Strawberry-Orange Rum Punch

Yes, most of the best big batch cocktails made with rum come in the form of a rum punch. The reason why is because punch is easy to make, easy to serve, and can taste amazing — provided that you have the right recipe. Punch also happens to be the most common form of all big batch cocktails, so there's that too.

There's something about the dog days of summer that makes most people crave citrus and berries. That's why so many summer meals involve orange slices and fruit salad, and why so many tiki bars involve cocktails infused with citrus flavors.

This recipe for Strawberry-Orange Rum Punch is a winner if you're looking for a brand new brunch cocktail that looks bougie, tastes great, and also doesn't take hours to make.

Our suggestion with this is to serve it as a brunch punch alongside salmon-topped toast, or to serve it as a dinner party punch outside near the beach. Either way, it'll taste (and look) like a sunrise in a glass.

Hurricanes By The Pitcher

This classic rum cocktail doesn't have to stay limited to an individual serving if you don't want it to. Hurricanes are actually one of the best cocktails to scale up to larger batches.

Most people don't realize how popular Hurricanes actually are in the bar scene — or how easy they are to make into large batches. In fact, many of the best big batch cocktails made with rum are actually spinoffs of Hurricanes.

Sometimes, though, you don't want a spinoff of a good drink. Sometimes, you just want a classic rum cocktail that you adore and have adored for years.

This blog shows you how to make Hurricanes by the pitcher. Our advice is to make at least two batches for large parties. People can never get enough of the classics, you know.

Pineapple Rum Punch

Some rum punch recipes are classics that work well as long as they are served at the right party. In our opinion, Pineapple Rum Punch is one of those drinks.

This is the kind of sweet and tropical punch that only works well at beach parties, pool parties, brunches, and tiki parties. Why? Because it gets people tipsy very quickly, it's insanely sweet, and it tastes exactly like summer in Hawaii.

That being said, it's very easy to overkill on this particular brand of rum punch. So, if you're worried about dinner guests feeling sick from too much sugar on a hot day, or if you're worried about a guest turning into "that girl," you may want to skip this one.

Despite the warning we just gave, we still want to point out that this is one of the best big batch cocktails made with rum that we've seen — and that it's totally worth a shot.

This stately rum punch mixes sparkling wine with rum to make a fizzy rendition of a classic pineapple drink. You can get the recipe for this awesome Pineapple Rum Punch cocktail here.

Mojitos By The Pitcher

Though we may have ragged on mojitos in our introduction, it is possible to make them work at your next party. The only thing that you have to do is scale it up for a larger group of people.

The big time consumer when making mojitos is muddling all the mint, and making sure that mint flavor gets into the mojito drink mix. However, if you have a good recipe, then mojitos can easily rank high on any list of the best big batch cocktails made with rum.

If you want to make a large batch of mojitos, try this basic mojito pitcher recipe. Once you've mastered that, you can easily modify it with new twists that suit your palate.

Prohibition Sweet Tea

If there's one thing that the American South understands, it's how to make a damned good pitcher of iced tea. Sweet tea has been part of Southern cuisine for hundreds of years, and unsurprisingly, Southerners have become masters at kicking this classic drink up a notch for parties.

Most of the time, you'll hear of people mixing sweet tea with whiskey. However, one of the best big batch cocktails made with rum is actually a fairly simple twist on just adding rum to sweet tea.

It's called Prohibition Sweet Tea, and it's rumored to have started back when alcohol was first outlawed. You can actually learn how to make a killer Prohibition Sweet Tea online — even if you're not from the South.

Long Island Iced Teas

Bartenders already know that LITs are some of the best big batch cocktails made with rum. In fact, many bars make them ahead of time and even put them "on tap" via large containers because they manage to keep their taste for hours on end.

This cocktail is one of the strongest on this list, if not the strongest. Making a pitcher of Long Island Iced Tea, therefore, means that your party will probably be in for a wild night.

Much like with others on this list, making a good LIT all boils down to getting a recipe that can "scale up." This large scale Long Island Iced Tea recipe is great for people who don't ming getting totally lit during their party.