When you're enjoying some frosty draft brews with friends, you need to know how many drinks you can draw from that pitcher.

Mix this New Orleans classic hours ahead of time, says Andrew Volk, of Maine's Portland Hunt & Alpine Club, and serving it is as simple as pouring a pitcher of lemonade.

And compared with buying bottled water, using a water filter pitcher is substantially more affordable (we did the math). You might want to have certain substances removed from your drinking water ...

No worry about the filtering parts, the lid has a strainer to prevent pouring fruit slag or ice into the drink and at the same time it also can leave tea bags or fruit pieces in the pitcher.

The advantage? When the guests arrive, all the host needs to do is open the fridge, pull out the glass drink pitcher, maybe add a few ice cubes to a glass, and pour. No complicated, on-the-spot ...