Piña Corona Is The Summer Beer Cocktail With A Tropical Twist

Name two tastier summertime drinks than Corona Mexican lager and the piña colada — we'll wait. You could serve just these two beverages at your next party, ideally with a non-alcoholic spin on the piña colada, too, and your guests would be thrilled. But what if you took that pairing one step further and actually combined them? You'd be creating the piña Corona, a fresh and low-effort spin on two iconic beverages sure to delight.

The piña Corona is the latest cocktail-meets-beer mash-up trending on Tik Tok, where it's also sometimes called the Corona colada. Mixing tipples right into a bottle of Corona isn't the new part of the trend. Take one of the last big Corona cocktails to make waves, the Corona sunrise, merging lager and the tequila sunrise. Even without incorporating a whole cocktail recipe, there are plenty of ways to reinvent a beer like Corona, an easy-drinking blank canvas for everything from sodas and juices to bitters and hot sauce.

The piña Corona is the newest addition to this fusion category, taking the crisp, low-alcohol base of the beer and adding the citrusy, sweet, slightly boozy flavors of the piña colada. This adds depth and complexity to the beer, while bringing a refreshing quality and dry finish to the cocktail. While you're still getting rum from the piña colada — so don't be fooled — the beer waters the alcohol's wallop a bit without actually tasting watery.

Cracking open a Corona is pretty easy. Making a classic piña colada is only a bit more complicated, depending on whether you're blending up a frozen one or not. Crafting a piña Corona brings the effortlessness of the beer to the cocktail. 

Simply open your Corona and pour half of it out — you can drink that half, too, of course. Right into the bottle, add 2 ounces of rum. There are several different types of rum, but white rum is the go-to because of its lightness and versatility. Then add 1 ounce of coconut cream, and top with pineapple juice, basically to fill or to your preference — if you don't know where to start, add 2 ounces and decide if you like your piña Corona a little sweeter or a little more acidic. Finally, to mix up the ingredients without actually shaking your beer and creating a fizzy mess, tip the bottle upside down and back a few times, covering the top completely with your thumb or a stopper.

You can also go the route of dry-shaking the rum, coconut cream, and pineapple juice in a cocktail tin first, then pouring that into the bottle with a funnel, which achieves a professional bartender level of mixing. But the right-into-the-bottle approach works almost as well, and the speed and ease of making a piña Corona is part of its appeal.