I made the Blackberry Daiquiri a few weeks back but wanted to revisit the classic cocktail the way it was intended to be made with a minor twist. The key ingredients are white rum and very fresh lime juice. I really like to use El Dorado white rum which is made from Demerara sugar in Guyana. Demerara sugar is richer than regular cane sugar so the rum has a little bit more body than say Bacardi or Matusalem. The original recipe doesn’t call for any sort of cocktail bitters but I find that Bittermen’s grapefruit bitters bottled by the Bitter Truth company goes extremely well with drinks made with white rum.
The Daiquiri Cocktail
2 oz light rum
1 oz lime juice
1/2 oz simple syrup
a dash of grapefruit bitters
Shake hard with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime wedge or spent lime shell.
Filed under: Booze | Tagged: Demerara Sugar, El Dorardo White Rum, Guyana, The Bitter Truth Grapefruit Bitters, The Classic Daiquiri
[...] 3. The Daiquiri – Sugar, lime juice and rum combine as one make the alcoholic brother of limeade. Cocktails really don’t get any more simple than this. I like using light rums in daiquiris so that the cocktail has a nice crisp, almost pastel hue and am personally not a fan of gold or dark rum in daiquiris. Some of my favorite light rums are Matusalem from the Dominican Republic, El Dorado from Guyana, Flor de Cana from Nicaragua and Appleton’s from Jamaica. All of these bottles cost less than $20 and make fine Cuba Libres as well as daiquiris. While you could use regular bar sugar or simple syrup to make this drink, you can really jazz it up by substituting gomme syrup. Gomme syrup is pretty much the same thing as simple syrup aside from the addition of gum arabic which acts as an emulsifier. Prior to prohibition gomme syrup was the standard sugar product used to make mixed drinks. It’s messy to make at home as gum arabic is very sticky and dangerous when boiling. It hadn’t been commercially available for a long time but Cocktail Kingdom now carries Scrappy’s gomme syrup and if you’re interested you can pick it up here. Cocktail Kingdom also carries a fine selection of vintage cocktail books, high end Japanese bar supplies and hard to find syrups and bitters. Again, you’ll want to use the freshest limes available and don’t want to squeeze the juice until you’re ready to make the drink. Finally, if you want to add a little something extra to a daiquiri, a few dashes of grapefruit bitters really brings out a lot of the natural tropical fruit flavors good light rums have. I think daiquiris are great both on the rocks or served up but stay away from the slushie machines or blenders please. You can check out the post I did on the daiquiri here. [...]