Welcome to Common Man Cocktails. I’m your host Derrick Schommer. Today, we’re going to do the Mojito. Now, this is going to be cool because we’ve done the Mojito before. What we did is we did a 10 Can Rum kit and it was a Rose’s premix. We’re not doing premix this time, we’re going hardcore. And by hardcore, I mean we’re going mauling up some mints, we’re going to use some sugars. It’s like we’re going to be all crazy. But you know what, it’s going to taste a little more natural, a little more fresh. It’s just a little more work. It’s really not that much to begin with.
And the reason I have two glasses, my two little high ball glasses here from AwesomeDrinks.Com is because I want to make two separate Mojitos. So it might take a little longer, bear with me. I’m going to do a Gosling’s Black Seal because it’s a dark rum. I’ve seen tons of recipes out there, some were dark and some were light. I know the original recipe is probably lighter. So we have 10 Cane. This is a returning guest from when we did it with a 10 Cane Rum Kit. And I think we’re going to pretty much tap out that bottle. And with that, we’re going to make the same ingredients, the same core ingredients because we’re going to need to use a little lime, about half an ounce of lime. Let’s cut the lime in half, squeeze it, put it into your drink and about three quarters of an ounce of simple syrup. You could use sugar cubes like just one teaspoon, some recipes say four teaspoons. That’s overkill. So I would say two. I decided—you know what, sugar cubes don’t dissolve so well when you start adding ice to this drink. So, we’re going to just stay far away from those. We’re going to go with the simple syrup because it’s easier and it’s already blended so you’re going to get instant sweetness. If you don’t have one of these, this is a mauler. You use it to pretty much squeeze all the juices out of the mints. You don’t want to grind up because then you’ll get little pieces of mint in there, that’s not cool. We’ll garnish it with a couple of limes, why not?
I’m going to use six mint leaves. So we got six mint leaves there. We’ve got two sprigs so that we have some sort of garnish and we’ll throw another six into this side. This is all to taste. If you like six, great. If you like seven, eight, ten, twelve—some people do fourteen. So do what you love but try it with six and go up and down from there. And then we’re going to pour our half an ounce of fresh lime juice right into this little mint. Let them float around in there. It’s just going to help unlock some of the tastes and draw the mint out. And we’re going to also do our simple syrup. We’re going to do three quarters of an ounce. Let’s put one in here. This is not a shake and drink although again, some recipes shake it. I don’t. You could shake it once or twice. There is just different techniques.
The mojito is a really old recipe. Some say it goes back to Sir Francis Drake and pirates. Pretty cool. They didn’t use rum apparently back then. So what we’re going to do is just squeeze the leaves around inside of this neat little mish mash of crazy sugars and the sweetness. Do that on both of them. Don’t get too aggressive because you don’t want to break them up too much or at all really. You don’t want tears. You want to literally squeeze some of them. That should do. So it’s all about technique. Now, you’ve just got this little guys lined in this awesome little sugar and lime concoction of sweet and sour. It’s perfect. And then what we’ll do is we’re going to put the rum in and then we’re going to ice and do a little shake with the bar shaker—this would be stir. Shake it, not stirred.
So, we’re going to do 1 ½ ounces of the rum. Look at how close I am to the end. But that’s okay because I went shopping today. We got another. I wasn’t sure it was going to make it through. Put that down there for now. So this would be our darker mojito.
Now, there is a personal preference. You know what, I don’t want to taint this at all with the dark. So, we’ll do again 1 ½ ounces. Maybe a little extra but not too much. She’s tapped. Alright. There you go. Just a little higher but not much. I figured this has nothing to do with barely a half ounce. Now, what we’ll do.
Alright. The last thing I forgot to mention with this very standard mojito is we’re going to use some club soda to sprits it up. That comes in at the end. Let’s toss some ice in here. Now if you have smaller ice cubes, try to use those. I don’t have an ice maker in my refrigerator, so I have to buy the bagged ice. But, next Tuesday is my birthday—wait a minute, this airs on Tuesday, it’s my birthday. Awesome. So this is my birthday present. So I’ve asked for an ice maker. So then we will see that sometime.
So you got your ice on there. Now, I don’t want to get too crazy here. Open this too fast and you’ve got yourself a mess. Now, you could pour this just on top. Honestly, I’ve done this a lot this last week, trying them up with the right recipe. I’m more partial, not to too much club soda. Almost straight to me is better. I don’t know if anybody has had mojito and had that same experience where you’re just like—you know what, I don’t need a lot of club soda. I don’t need any. Move that around a little bit.
We’ll garnish it with our sprigs of mint, drop on a little lime wheel. I don’t know, it looks like restaurant quality to me. I got these diamond glass straws. Just throw those in there. What do you think? Personally, I think they both have a separate—jus the style alone, there’s a separate. This one looks a little more of a thirst quenching. This one looks a little more complex. Do you see how they go? And the bonus of using these little straws, if you’re going to suck right for the bottom where all the goodness lies, you move the straw to kind of mix it.
Let me try that again. Let’s get through this, the light rum. Now, the 10 Cane is a sugar cane rum so it’s going to give you a little more sweetness. We’ve already got sweetness in here, so you’re going to get a lighter, more sweet drink. Maybe something that might be good. You just mowed the lawn, you’re sweating and you want to sit down. This is a good idea. You know, it didn’t take that long. The hardest part is probably squeezing the line. Not too bad. So you do get that light appeal. That’s more sweet. It really comes down to this I think. The Black Seal—maybe it’s just my taste but I get more sweet out of it. I get like a caramel sweetness. I don’t know which ones are really better. I’m just glad I’ve got both to choose from.
So there you go. You know what, before I finish, I wanted to mention our new sponsor. We’ve got a Cavalino Tequila. If you’ve watched my episode, you have probably seen this. Since probably day one, I’ve had Cavalino and it’s a Texas tequila that came in. I don’t know how many years ago, but they’re starting to crawl outside of Texas now. If you’re in Texas, you’d probably be able to find this for about $23 for the Reposado, a little less like 21 maybe for the silver blanc or whatever you want to call it. One of my favorite tequila is I like the Reposao. A little more on the silver, I’m a reposado type of guy. If you go back and you search on EverydayDrinkers.Tv for the perfect margarita, I believe we used this. So I figured, let’s ask them. They enjoyed the episodes. They wanted to sponsor some so they’re going to be around for a little while. That’s your Cavalino Tequila. You know, search up Cavalino on the site, you’ll find all kinds of cool recipes.
But this is today’s show, I’ve been waiting a long time to do the mojitos and I’m happy it’s on my birthday. I’m your host Derrick Schommer. Check us out in iTunes. If you got iTunes, type Derrick Schommer, type Everyday Drinkers, Common Man Cocktails, you’ll find all my shows. If you do Everyday Drinkers, we have an audio podcast too.
There you go. I’m your host Derrick Schommer, and we’re teaching you how to drink.
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