[2] If you can borrow a tap dispenser, it’s more convenient than pitchers (photo courtesy Flavor & The Menu).

Beyond water, sparkling water and our cache of diet soft drinks, we’re making a few quarts of agua fresca. In Spanish, agua fresca means fresh water; but in culinary terms, the water is combined with fresh fruit juice. The result: refreshing cold drinks that are sold by street vendors and at cafés throughout Latin America.

A traditional agua fresca is an infused, sweetened water, flavored with fruits and/or vegetables. Nonalcoholic and noncarbonated, in the U.S. a similar drink is called a cooler.

Agua fresca is also available bottled, in numerous flavors, and is made from scratch at home.

The recipes can include a combination of fruits or veggies, flowers, herbs and/or spices, cereals, seeds, even almond flour. The result is often a more complex layering of flavors than American lemonade and limeade.

Agua de horchata, a very popular recipe, is made of ground raw rice spiced with cinnamon.

Other ingredients include flowers (hibiscus), herbs (sorrel), grains (alfalfa, barley, oats, rice), nuts and seeds (almond flour, chía). Try incorporating some of these after you’re already pleased with a basic fruit and/or vegetable recipe.
 
 
HAVE AN AGUA FRESCA PARTY

Make a few flavors and supply a choice of garnishes.

Depending on your guests, a choice of clear spirits—cachaca, gin, tequila, vodka—may also be welcome.

 
For a vegetable component, cucumber is the most popular (with lime and mint or pineapple). But you can turn to other juices: carrot juice and apple or pineapple, beet juice and berries, etc.

Keep it light: save the kale and broccoli for the juice bar.

Chill the drinks in the fridge, but also have a supply of ice cubes.

As an on-trend American update, you can substitute coconut water for all or part of the water in your recipe, especially delicious in this pineapple agua fresca recipe with lemongrass.

Here’s the agua fresca recipe template. Unleash your inner mixologist and mix different flavors of juice, to create your own signature recipes.

A melon tap turns any large, seedless watermelon into a keg (or punch bowl, for a younger crowd), ideal for filling with watermelon-based beverages.

Simply hollow out the melon, insert the tap and fill it with your beverage of choice.

A fun element at a gathering, your guests will have a memorable time of dispensing their drinks from a watermelon.

Serve it as a finale to the last event of the summer.

Just fill the watermelon with watermelon agua fresca.

For a hit of alcohol, you can find watermelon-flavored vodka from Smirnoff, Three Olives, Pinnacle (Cucumber Watermelon), UV (Salty Watermelon) and others.

In the fall, you can do the same with a pumpkin and apple cider (and apple vodka, of course).