Oh the watermelon keg, it’s a novelty of human creativity, practically the essence of cheap but appealing party planning. The watermelon is a treasure trove of luscious alcoholic potential, perfect for both small and large parties.
At first, I honestly thought that making this would be a pain in the ass; cutting the watermelon, extracting the pulp, and attaching that spigot looked like a lot of messy work destined for disaster. Nevertheless, I had a crowd to please and I knew that if I was successful, I would have the upper hand in savings and aesthetics. Thus I dived in and now I can only say that: It’s surprisingly pretty damn easy…
The first thing I did was buy the spigot. I looked around for a while until I encountered something like the dispenser to the right. It has the perfect spigot, and it runs fairly cheap compared to everything else I found.
The key is to make sure the spigot has a screw on the inside end, so that you can get a tight and waterproof seal.
Next, I bought the watermelon, put it on it’s side and cut about half an inch of skin from what I intended to be the base. This ensures some extra stability for when people start to get rowdy. Then I cut the top off, I would say about an inch and a half to two inches thick. You should be able to see the red pulp, and make sure that you can easily fit your hand through the diameter. (You can keep the top that you cut off as a lid)
Next, I used an ice cream scooper to take out all the pulp and I put it into pots, intended for use as an ingredient in the Margarita type mix that was going to fill the keg.
Once the watermelon was free of pulp I began inserting the spigot. I would recommend that you mark you’re intended hole where the curve of the bottom starts to become flatter ( about 2.5-3 inches from the base). This ensures a waterproof seal. Next I picked out three screws that gradually became bigger and bigger up until their diameter was just a little smaller than the spigot’s screw. I screwed each one in and out up until the hole was just right to screw in the spigot.
Finally, I screwed the inner screw onto the spigot and the legendary watermelon keg was complete.
For the Margarita mix/juice that filled the keg:
- Poured about 1 cup of tequila into a standard blender
- Added the watermelon pulp until the blender was 65% full
- Poured about 1/2 cup of limeade or lime juice
- 1/2 cup of triple-sec
- 1/4 cup of simple syrup
- And about 1/2 cup of sour mix
- You can add extra sugar, if things get too sour/if you want the drink to mess people up faster
If you use all the watermelon pulp with the recipe it makes about enough to fill the keg two times, the strength of the mix depends on how much tequila you put in. Beware! The mix listed above tastes very good, you can drink it quickly, and it can get people messed up very fast!
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