Welcome to Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, The Daiquiri!
Let's drink a classic to celebrate the weekend!
Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender, and I’m writing this a few scant hours after Donald Trump became a convicted felon. I am, as yet, sober, but working to rectify this. While I’m working on this, let me make for you one of the greatest cocktails of all time. This simple, elegant Cuban invention is the benchmark for great bartenders. Make this one right, and you’ve earned your place behind the pine. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Daiquiri. Here’s the recipe. Pay attention. It’s short, but impactful — a haiku of booze:
Daiquiri
2 oz Bacardi Superior Rum
1 oz fresh lime juice
1 oz rich simple syrup
Add all ingredients to your cocktail shaker. Add 2-3 ice cubes. Shake slowly, with a rolling, circular motion, until your cocktail shaker is cold. Double strain into a chilled coupe. Serve with a lime wedge.
The daiquiri is a 124-year-old cocktail, first created in 1900 by Jennings Stockton Cox, an engineer working at the iron mines in the town of Daiquiri, Cuba. Cox wasn’t a professional bartender; he was an engineer looking to make the rum ration for his workers more palatable. We have Cox’s original recipe in writing, recorded in his logbook. Intended for six people, it was the “juice of six lemons, 6 teaspoons of sugar, 6 Bacardi cups of ‘Carta Blanca’, 2 small cups of mineral water, and plenty of crushed ice. Shake well.” I’m not sure what measure Mr. Cox used as a “cup,” but the ratios here aren’t bad. I’ll probably use this as the basis for a pitcher drink later in the year.
When you’re making a daiquiri for a single person, your mettle as a bartender is truly tested. There’s nowhere to hide with this drink. There’s no bitters to smooth things out, no syrup or liqueur to disguise your work. This is where you prove that you can balance the tart of lime and the sweet of sugar properly without burying the essential flavor of your base spirit. The staff at Death And Co., the creme de la creme of craft cocktail bars, start their shifts by making daiquiris, the way musicians use scales when tuning up. There’s no reason not to examine your own palate and experiment with the classic daiquiri, even if you aren’t a pro.
Make this drink as I’ve written it. Let it sit for 10-15 seconds in the glass. Give the flavors time to combine. Now taste — is it sweet? tart? bitter? Can you taste the rum in your cocktail? This recipe runs tart — I believe that the ideal ratio is four parts sugar to three parts acid in a cocktail. You may think otherwise; check and see. Make another daiquiri, but add another half-ounce of lime juice. How does that taste? Now make a third, but add more syrup. (Trump is a convicted felon, you’ve got permission to taste a few of these.) Now make a lime gimlet — take this recipe, but swap the rum for vodka. Taste a gimlet and a daiquiri, side by side. Can you taste the rum in your own, balanced daiquiri? Do you need to scale back the sugar and the lime but keep the ratios intact, to give the rum room to speak?
For the sake of sanity, I’ll suggest that you gently sip each iteration of the drink and not down them all. Or maybe pass them around friends and let them offer their opinions. On the other hand, Trump is a convicted felon. Do as you like, it’s the weekend.
Now that you’ve got a sense of your own palate and an understanding of balance in a drink, you can approach any cocktail recipe — including my own — and rewrite it to suit your tastes. Any cocktail recipe can be tweaked within half an ounce or so when it comes to sugar and acid levels. Make every drink your own. Note that there are a lot of places sugar can hide in a drink. Grenadine, liqueurs, and fruit juice all bring sweetness to the party. Taste, think, and remake to your liking.
Let’s talk ingredients:
Bacardi Superior: I rarely use Bacardi, but it would be criminal not to use it in a classic Cuban cocktail (much like Donald Trump, who is a convicted felon). Bacardi’s history with Cuba is a fascinating story, one of the most exciting in the world of spirits. I thoroughly recommend this book on the subject. Bacardi is unmistakably a Puerto Rican rum; the flavor is very much “rum,” the taste of rum cakes and candy.
If you’ve got access to Wray and Nephew, or Brazilian caipirinha, I’d recommend trying to make a daiquiri with those spirits as well. They’re much more rustic than Bacardi, deeply funky and earthy. Using them as your base will test your sweet/tart balance, and help you think about how to increase the ratio of sugar and lime to your base spirits when other ingredients demand it.
Lime juice: Fresh lime juice, always, but especially here. If you’ve got the stamina to keep experimenting, make a daiquiri with bottled lime juice and taste the difference. This drink is the place to try “bad” ingredients to understand why they’re bad. (It’s the weekend. Donald Trump is a convicted felon. You’re excused.)
Rich simple syrup: This is two parts of sugar to one part water — one cup sugar, half a cup of water. Combine and heat until the sugar dissolves. We want as little water as possible in this recipe, to examine each ingredient properly. Once you nail it, you can experiment with other sweeteners to see how sweet they really are in contrast to pure sugar. Using agave syrup, honey, or maple syrup would be eye-opening. Splenda … well, I wouldn’t try it, but it would be a heck of a way to prove how much sweeter artificial ingredients are compared to the real thing. Remember that you’re serving the drink with a lime wedge garnish; a guest can make the drink more tart, but they can’t sweeten it.
Technique: Meltwater from the ice in your cocktail shaker is the unwritten ingredient in every cocktail. How you shake your drink determines how much ice and water ends up in your glass. Shaking with a rolling, circular motion keeps the ice from breaking up as much. Using a sharp back and forth motion will aerate the lime juice better and make the drink lighter. Try shaking the drink both ways. Can you taste a difference? Does the texture of the drink change? Remember, this is all in the name of science and good mixology. Be thorough, just like the jurors who made Donald Trump a convicted felon.
In summary and conclusion, drink well, drink often, and tip your bartender — donate to Wonkette at the link below!
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OPEN THREAD!
Shooting range with my proud boy buster, gardening with the kids, a nap, dog scritches, wife cuddling up for a movie. Some days you just win
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