Quarantined Cocktails: The Classic Daiquiri
Every Friday we’re going to share professional cocktail tips and tricks for your at-home, weekend festivities. Whether you’re curious about new ways to work with spirits on your liquor shelf, or you want fresh ideas for mock-tails you can create, we’ll have something for you.
This week we’re sharing one of the most versatile classic cocktails to get everyone started, The Classic Daiquiri. Its simple format can be used with any spirit, any flavor added, herbs, spices, you name it. It’s the perfect place for us to start this series and get everyone comfortable with what they can do at home. Please share with us your photos, recipes and riffs on Instagram and Facebook. If you have specific ingredients, or future requests, shoot an email to quarantinedcocktails@gmail.com.
Hey community. My name is Leigh Ann. You might recognize me from many listserv emails over the years. I’ve been a part of CVC for about four years now. And for those of you who don’t know me, I work in beverage. So every Friday from now until the end of this mess, I’m going to post little videos with some at home cocktail tips, some recipes, we’re going to work through some classic cocktails, and talk about the flavors and why you do things certain ways so that you can start digging into all those random things that you might have floating around your refrigerator and your liquor shelf.
So this week, I’m going to make a classic Daiquiri, not this syrupy, sweet, sugary, frozen thing that you might be more familiar with. But just a classic Daiquiri, which in its most basic format is just lime juice, sugar, and rum.
I myself, I’m working with some weird quarantine ingredients today. So we’ll talk about at the end, why I’m using certain amounts of things. Kind of the thought behind it so that over the weekend, you guys can start digging into your pantries and working with whatever things you have floating around.
So to start we’ll talk about tools. I happen to have these beautiful, wonderful professional shakers, straighteners and things floating around my house, but you might not. So I’m gonna make everything in what you probably do have at home and that’s going to be one of the protein shakers. Certainly professionals will argue that the tools that you use and the glassware you serve it and it’s going to make a difference in the flavor profile. That’s true to some degree. 99% of people will not know the difference. So whatever you have is fine. Shake it up. Good to go. All you’re looking for is a little bit of aeration and some dilution on it.
So we’re going to start with — I have lemon juice instead of lime so I’m going to use an answer that some simple syrup, also going to use an ounce of this. This is super easy to make Just 50/50 sugar and hot water started until it dissolves, let it cool down, you’re good to go. And then the rum that I have left, which as you can see is a little bit ravaged itself is going to be this higher proof rum from Trinidad. So I’m going to use two ounces of that.
I did leave the little ball that comes with these. It’s just gonna help with it a little bit. So we should get a nice frothy head on the cocktail. We’ll find out and then you can use as few as just three ice cubes. No need to use a ton if you don’t have an ice maker. I have one of these so I’m going to use it, but the holes on these are small enough to hold your ice back. That’s really the most important part of it.
And I happen to have dehydrated wild lemons here so I’m gonna garnish with a little bit of that - you can add any kind of herbs, mint, rosemary, any kind of dried fruit, dried flower, [fresh citrus wheel] something like that if you’d like to, but you certainly don’t have to the cocktail to us already done when you put the ingredients in there.
Cheers!
So just to explain a little bit about why I did the specs, the way I did my rum is higher proof. So I wanted to add more citrus and more sugar to it, because this one’s going to be really hot on the palate. Most of the products that you’re probably working with are closer to 40% ABV. So in that case, you could just use three quarter ounce of your citrus.
My rule when working with lemon and lime, lemon I always use the same amount of sugar as I do lemon juice because it’s higher in acidity than lime is. So when I’m working with lime, I take the sugar content down a quarter ounce. And again, most of your products are probably closer to 40% ABV. So, you know, you can adjust that to how sweet how sour you personally prefer it. This was just the way I liked it. So if you guys have specific cocktails you’d like to see or any like random ingredients you want me to work with. You’re welcome to shoot me an email at quarantinedcocktails@gmail.com.
The Classic Daiquiri : 2 oz White Rum, .75 oz Fresh Lime Juice, .5 oz Simple Syrup (1:1). Shake and strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a lime wheel.
My Daiquiri: 2 oz Over-Proof Rum, 1 oz Fresh Lemon Juice, 1 oz Simple Syrup (1:1). Shake and strained into a rocks glass (it’s what I have at home!). Garnished with dehydrated wild lemon wheel.
