Caipirinha
Cachaça, lime and sugar, muddled into Brazil's national drink.
Photo: Cocktail Caipirinha raw · All credits
Ingredients
Measures below are multiplied for 12 drinks. Unmeasurable amounts such as “a splash” are left as written.
- 720 ml Measuring jug A measuring jug: pour to the 720 ml line. Cachaça - An unaged one, and there is no substitute - rum is not the same drink
- 12 limes Lime - A whole one, cut into wedges, with the pith trimmed off if you can be bothered
- 237 ml Measuring jug A measuring jug: pour to the 237 ml line. Sugar - White cane sugar, and a little more if your limes are sour
- 2839 ml Measuring jug A measuring jug: pour to the 2839 ml line. Ice - Crushed, or cracked in a tea towel with a rolling pin
Measured in Millilitres (UK). Sign in to read these in American measures. Print a kitchen card at this size.
What the jigger, the spoons and the jug hold, in millilitres and in fluid ounces, is on the measures reference.
Quick version
- Muddle lime and sugar, add cachaça, fill with crushed ice and stir.
Method
Batch (12 drinks)Batch (12 drinks) - about 3.8 l of measured ingredients, before ice and dilution.
Timings and per-glass steps below are written for one drink and are not scaled. A full jug takes longer to chill, so stir or shake until it is properly cold rather than by the clock, and pour over fresh ice one glass at a time.
- Cut the lime into six or eight wedges and drop them into a rocks glass.
- Add the sugar and press the lime with a muddler - firmly enough to release the juice and the oil, gently enough not to shred the pith.
- Pour in the cachaça and stir to dissolve the sugar.
- Fill the glass with crushed ice and stir again, until the outside of the glass frosts.
- Top up with a little more ice, and serve as it is.
Serve it
Volumes in this story are multiplied for the size above, along with the ingredients. Years, ratios and the capacities of glasses and jugs are left as written.
Caipirinha
Brazil's national drink, made from cachaça - a cane spirit distilled from fresh juice rather than from molasses, which is what makes it grassier and wilder than rum. The drink is supposedly an old folk remedy: lime, garlic and honey for a cold, with the garlic quietly dropped when it was discovered that the lime and the sugar worked better with a spirit in them. The version without the garlic is the one the world adopted.
Getting it right
Muddle, do not pulverise. The aim is to free the lime juice and a little of the oil in the skin, and a badly muddled caipirinha - all bitter pith and torn rind - is the reason people say they do not like them. Cut the wedges, trim away the worst of the pith, and press rather than pound. Sugar next, then the spirit, then the ice: crushed ice is the traditional and the right answer, because it chills the drink quickly and melts into it as you go. If you have no cachaça, the honest thing to do is to buy some; a caipirinha made with rum is a caipirissima, and it is a different (though not bad) drink.
Tasting notes
Grassy cane spirit, sharp lime and clean cane sugar, with the ice thinning it all out as you drink. Bracing, sour and impossible to stop at one.
A caipiroska is the same drink made with vodka, and a caipirissima with rum - both are worth knowing, and neither is a caipirinha.