Adios Motherfucker
An AMF, short for Adios Motherfucker, is a Long Island Iced Tea turned blue. It takes 15ml each of vodka, gin, white rum, blanco tequila and blue curaçao, 25ml fresh lemon juice and 10ml sugar syrup, built over ice in a highball and topped with 60ml lemonade. Blue curaçao stands in for the Long Island’s Cointreau and lemonade for its cola, so the drink comes out bright blue instead of amber. It is strong. One glass carries about 2.7 UK units, close to three 25ml pub singles, and the lemon and lemonade hide most of it. Two things decide how it turns out. Measure every pour, because a heavy hand on any one bottle makes an AMF taste of that bottle. And use fresh lemon with clear lemonade: sour mix makes it sweet and flat, and cloudy lemonade turns it green.
Glassware: Highball Glass
Garnish: Lemon wheel and Maraschino cherry
Ingredients
15ml
A London Dry. At 15ml the juniper is faint, but it gives the drink a dry, aromatic edge against the sugar.
15ml
A light white rum. A heavy or funky rum will push through the other pours at this measure.
15ml
The colour, and the only orange in the drink. It is an orange liqueur coloured blue; De Kuyper’s is 20% ABV on LWC’s UK trade listing, half the strength of the Cointreau it replaces, so it is sweeter and lighter. Swap in triple sec and the drink is no longer blue.
25ml
Squeezed the same day and fine-strained. It is the only acid in the glass, and pulp pushes the blue towards green.
10ml
One part sugar dissolved in one part water, by weight. Only 10ml, because the blue curaçao and the lemonade already bring sugar.
60ml
Clear, chilled lemonade or a lemon-lime soda. Cloudy lemonade is yellow and turns the drink green. Pour it last and gently.
Instructions
Squeeze the lemon juice the same day and fine-strain out the pulp.
Fill a highball glass to the top with cubed ice.
Measure the vodka, gin, white rum, blanco tequila and blue curaçao over the ice.
Add the lemon juice and sugar syrup, and stir for a few seconds to mix.
Top with the lemonade, poured gently down the inside of the glass.
Lift once from the bottom with a bar spoon to bring the blue up through the lemonade.
Garnish with a lemon wheel and a maraschino cherry, and serve at once with a straw.
Expert Tip
Measure all five pours with a jigger, every time. Free-pouring five bottles is how an AMF ends up well past 2.7 units and tasting of whichever bottle went in heaviest. Never reach for sour mix. It replaces the lemon’s acid with sugar, and five pours of spirit with no real acid under them is the AMF people remember from a bad night. If the drink tastes too sweet, cut the syrup first, down to 5ml or none at all. The blue curaçao and the lemonade still carry enough sugar between them.
Behind the Adios Motherfucker
Flavour Profile
The Origin
Nobody has a documented claim to the AMF. There is no bar, bartender or date attached to it in the way Robert ‘Rosebud’ Butt attaches his name to the Long Island Iced Tea. It belongs to a set of coloured Long Island variations, and the formula explains them: keep four white spirits and fresh lemon, then change the liqueur and the topper. Blue curaçao and lemonade make this one. Midori makes the Tokyo Iced Tea; Chambord makes the Grateful Dead.
The full name is the one people search for and the initials are the one bars print. Both mean the same drink.
Why It Works
Four spirits at 15ml each give a 60ml base with no single flavour in charge. Vodka adds strength, gin a little juniper, white rum a little roundness, tequila a green, peppery edge. None of them is loud at that measure. The lemon and the blue curaçao decide what the drink tastes of.
The 25ml of lemon is the backbone. Against it sit three sources of sugar: the blue curaçao, 10ml of syrup and the lemonade. That is why the syrup is a third of the Long Island’s 30ml. Pour the full Long Island measure here and the sweetness swamps the lemon.
The Blue Curaçao
Blue curaçao is an orange liqueur coloured blue. De Kuyper’s is 20% ABV on LWC’s UK trade listing, half the strength of the 40% Cointreau the Long Island uses, by Cointreau’s own site, which is why an AMF carries slightly less alcohol than its parent. The colour is dye in every bottle, so choose on the orange: it is the only one in the drink.
Keeping It Blue
The colour is arithmetic. Fifteen millilitres of blue meets 25ml of yellow lemon juice and 60ml of lemonade. With clear lemonade and strained juice, the blue wins. With cloudy lemonade, pulpy juice or a heavy hand on the lemon, the yellow pulls it to teal and then green. Stirring only decides how evenly the colours mix, so one gentle lift is all the drink needs.
How Strong It Is
Taking the four spirits at 40% ABV and the blue curaçao at 20%, an AMF carries about 2.7 UK units. That is close to three 25ml pub singles in one glass, and the lemonade makes it drink like something much lighter. Pace it like three drinks, with water between them.
The Long Island Iced Tea sets the AMF beside its relatives, with the units for each.
Make it at home
The Spirit
VodkaVodka is spirit made from a farmed crop, usually grain or potatoes, distilled and refined so that the taste of that crop is deliberately reduced. Under the retained Regulation (EC) 110/2008 its minimum is 37.5% ABV and it may not be given a predominant flavour, which separates it from flavoured vodka and from gin; our recipes count it at 40%. In a mixed drink it adds strength and body while the other ingredients carry the taste.
Master the Techniques
More to explore
Frequently Asked Questions
What does AMF stand for?
What is in an AMF drink?
How strong is an AMF?
Why has my AMF turned green?
How is an AMF different from a Long Island Iced Tea?
Can I use triple sec instead of blue curaçao?
Can I use sour mix instead of fresh lemon?
Can I batch AMFs ahead?
Sources.
Correct as of 18 October 2026.
- LWC, “De Kuyper Blue Curacao 70cl” (UK trade listing: 20%).
- Cointreau, “Cointreau Triple Sec” (40% Alc./Vol. in the page footer).
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Long Island Iced Tea
A Long Island Iced Tea is five 15ml pours, vodka, blanco tequila, white rum, gin and Cointreau, with 25ml fresh lemon juice and 30ml sugar syrup, built over ice in a highball and finished with a short cola float. That is the International Bartenders Association specification. The IBA says to top with cola; we measure it at 30ml. The cola gives it the colour of iced tea. There is no tea in it. It is strong: about 3.0 UK units, three 25ml pub singles in one glass, behind a drink that tastes of lemon and cola. It goes wrong in three ways, usually together: free-poured spirits, sour mix instead of fresh lemon, and cola poured in by the can rather than floated. The AMF, the Grateful Dead, the Texas Tea and the Tokyo Iced Tea are all built on it.
Tom Collins
A Tom Collins is 60ml London Dry gin, 30ml fresh lemon juice and 15ml sugar syrup built over ice in a collins glass, topped with 90ml of cold soda and stirred once, with a lemon slice and a cherry. It is a collins in the plainest sense: spirit, citrus and sugar, topped with soda. Difford’s Guide, a secondary source, reports one account that traces the name to the Great Tom Collins Hoax of 1874, in which people in New York were told that a man called Tom Collins had been insulting them and could be found in a bar some distance away. It also gives accounts of a real Mr Collins. The drink the name attached to may be older: Difford’s credits John Collins, head waiter at Limmer’s Hotel on Conduit Street in London, with the Collins. Early recipes used Dutch genever, and Old Tom gin came into them later; the IBA still specifies Old Tom for a Tom Collins. This version uses London Dry for a drier, sharper drink, and the Old Tom version follows as a variation.
Mojito
A Mojito is 45ml of white rum, 20ml of fresh lime juice, two teaspoons of white cane sugar and six sprigs of mint, built in a highball. The mint is pressed gently with the sugar, the glass is filled with cubed ice, the rum and lime go in, and 75 to 100ml of chilled soda water tops it. About 1.8 UK units. Those are the IBA’s measures. The IBA only says to top up with soda, so the 75 to 100ml is ours. Press the mint once or twice and stop. Torn leaves make the drink bitter and grassy, and that, more often than the rum, is why a Mojito disappoints. The sugar grains help: they bruise the surface of the leaf as you press, and the lime then carries the oil through the glass.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits · Updated 18 October 2026