Hold the phone! Looking for low carb vodka drinks? After making this homemade lime vodka drink, I decided it would be my "Summer Cocktail" Homemade Vodka Cooler Drink is easy to make and tastes delicious, plus you know what the ingredients are!
If you are watching your carbs or sugar, make your own cooler vodka cocktails. YOU control the sugar, the calories and the carbs
Make these Homemade Lime Vodka Coolers as sweet or as light as you want. Think about it, store-bought coolers have 37-48 grams of carbs in them, plus some sort of preservatives, like sodium.
By making them yourself and tinkering you come up with keto vodka drinks. Low carb plus you know exactly what you put into it. You can enjoy with less guilt! And they are a little more sustainable in my opinion.
These Homemade Low Carb Vodka Coolers are delicious, refreshing and easy to make.
Table of Contents
Tips
- The key to this delicious-tasting refreshing low carb vodka cocktail are fresh limes and good vodka. To get the most from your limes, "supreme" your limes. Which means cut the skin off (and the pith) and pop out each lime segment. Check out this video on how to supreme limes. You'll be a professional chef in no time! It's easy!
- OR simply use your hand held citrus juice and squeeze the heck out of them that way. Either works.
- If you don't want pulp in your vodka cocktail, do not muddle the lime segments. Instead just squeeze juice from lime halves.
- You can purchase simple syrup but don't bother, make your own in minutes. See notes section of the recipe card for the how to.
For a larger batch cocktail party make-ahead, make lime simple syrup. That way you won't need to muddle any limes as you make the drink. Make a large batch of the base (vodka and lime simple syrup) place it in the fridge and when ready to use pour over ice and top with club.
After the skin and pith are off, simply pop out the segments, yum!! Plop 2 or 3 segments into each glass you will be using and muddle them (with a muddler or wooden spoon), you want them broken down into a pulp.
Squeeze any excess juice from what is left of your lime/limes, get every drop...even from the skins, and set aside a mason jar full of lime juice...So you can make LOTS of these coolers!
Vodka Cooler Ingredients
You are going to be blown away by how few ingredients it takes to make these coolers and HOW QUICK you can make them! Most of the ingredients are probably on hand at your house right now so whip one of these delicious low carb alcohol coolers up and enjoy!
- Water
- Sugar
- Limes
- Vodka
- Seltzer/Club
- Ice
How are these vodka coolers lower carb?
- Well, there are 774 calories and 200 carbs in a cup of white sugar.
- There are zero calories and carbs in a cup of water.
- There are zero carbs in vodka.
- When you make your simple syrup, the yield should be 22 TBS...SO each TBS of syrup you add to your cooler has just 36 calories and 9 carbs. The lime, the ice, and the seltzer...zero.
- Even if you use 2 TBS in your cooler, you are looking at 18 carbs vs the typical store-bought cooler which has 38-48 carbs. Learn more about the nutritional values in vodka.
Not too shabby! So even if you are looking for ways to reduce your carbs or sugar a bit, try these! Check out my Homemade Fresh Lime Soda. You control the carbs and calories.
I almost always have plain or flavored homemade simple syrup in my fridge. It makes the best lemonade! Plus I add it to a variety of homemade cocktails.
I hope you try out my scrumptious Homemade Low Carb Lime Vodka Coolers and let me know how much you enjoyed them!
Other Cocktail Recipes
Cheers! XO Colleen
Since I am not a Registered Dietitian or Nutritionist, I use a WordPress plug-in to calculate the nutritional information provided in the recipe card. Recipe originally published April 2017. Updated June, 2025.
Homemade Vodka Cooler Drinks
Ingredients
- Ice
- fresh lime
- 1.5 oz Vodka more or less to taste
- 1 oz simple syrup (1 TBS) more or less to taste
- 6 oz Seltzer or club soda more or less to taste
Instructions
- When ready to assemble the vodka coolers, first you want to supreme the limes. Like I described above. Once you have your limes cut into segments, place 2-3 segments in each glass and muddle them (with a muddler or wooden spoon). Get them all broken down, so you have pulp floating around your cocktail, yum! OR you can just squeeze them if you don't enjoy the pulp.
- Fill the glass with as much ice as you like, then vodka, then simple syrup (ratio will depend on the size glass you use and your preference for sweet).
- Top with seltzer or club, garnish with a lime slice and maybe a few thin shards of lime peel in the glass or a lime wedge and enjoy!!
Brandy | Nutmeg Nanny says
Anything Low cCarb and I'm on board! Looks and sounds delicious!
Kimberly Bixler says
1 cup sugar?? NOT low carb
Colleen says
Well, my thought was I am only using a little with each cocktail. That syrup lasts me quite a while. If you look at carbs per serving vs what a store-bought coolers carbs per serving are it's much lower, hence low carb.
cmtwings says
Easy, simple, delicious! Adjust the seltzer (or in my case sparkling water from my soda stream) and enjoy all summer afternoon.