Festival Season Drinks: What to Bring, What to Skip

Music festivals have a drink problem. Not the "too much" kind (though that exists). The "terrible options" kind. Twelve-dollar beers that taste like water. Frozen cocktails that are 90 percent ice and 10 percent regret. Wine in a plastic cup that has been sitting in the sun since 8am.

If you are going to spend three days in a field listening to music, you deserve better than this.

What to Bring (If the Festival Allows Outside Drinks)

Shelf-stable cocktails. This is their moment. No refrigeration needed for transport, no glass to worry about, no mixing required. A bottle of Deko Cocktails in your bag is a real cocktail whenever you want it. Pour into the festival cup you got at the gate, add whatever ice is available, and you are drinking better than everyone in the beer line.

Canned cocktails as backup. Look for spirits-based, not malt-based. Check the ABV — anything under 7% is basically a hard seltzer in disguise.

Electrolyte packets. Not technically a drink strategy, but the thing that makes all your other drink decisions survivable. Hydration is not optional when you are dancing in the sun for eight hours.

What to Skip

Handles of cheap liquor. The "bring a handle" era should have ended in college. Warm plastic-bottle vodka mixed with gas station orange juice is not a festival experience. It is a mistake with a handle.

Glass bottles. Most festivals ban them for safety reasons. Even if they do not, broken glass in a field full of people in sandals is a bad scene.

Anything you need to "make." Leave the cocktail shaker at home. If it requires more than pouring, it does not belong at a festival.

The Festival Drink Strategy

Alternate one drink with one water. This is not a buzzkill. This is how you make it to the headliner. The people who go hard from noon to 6pm are the same people asleep on a blanket during the best set of the weekend.

Eat real food. Festival food trucks have gotten genuinely good. Eat something substantial every few hours. Your body is working hard in the heat and the alcohol. Give it fuel.

Know when to switch to water for the night. There is a moment at every festival — usually around sunset — where the energy shifts from daytime party to nighttime experience. This is the moment to slow down on alcohol and speed up on water. The night sets are the ones you want to remember.