PREP TIME 5 min
Add a taste of tropical South America to your next party with our recipe for Caipirinhas. Made with fresh lime juice, sugar, and cachaça (a Brazilian rum distilled from sugar cane), these easy summertime cocktails will soon become a firm favourite with your crowd.
Learning how to make a Caipirinha is much easier than mastering the Samba. And if you get all the moves right, it will be one of the most refreshing drinks you’ll ever taste.
Add a few lime wedges and sugar to a double rocks glass
Muddle together
Fill the glass with ice, add the cachaça (or white rum) and stir
Pop a lime wheel onto the rim of the glass if you’re feeling fancy, and serve immediately
The origin of the first-ever Caipirinha cocktail is as muddled as the drink, and there are many theories as to who created the first. One story is that it dates back to the 19th century and that the Caipirinhas drink recipe was created by Brazilian sugar cane farmers to show off their produce. Another popular theory is that the recipe for Caipirinhas was developed to curb the Spanish flu outbreak towards the end of World War I. But that version included garlic, so we’re happy it evolved from there!
To make the best Caipirinha recipe, there are a few rules to keep in mind if you’re going to do it right. First up, you’re going to make it straight in the glass, which is excellent news if you’re serving these for a crowd (unless you actually enjoy washing dishes).
Secondly, try to get your hands on cachaça. While it’s OK to swap out this authentic South American sugar cane drink with light rum, the taste won’t be what you’d get when ordering a Caipirinha at a Brazilian bar.
Lime is the heart and soul of the Caipirinha drink recipe, so you’ve got to be a little picky when choosing them. You’re looking for soft and juicy limes with a smooth peel. But it’s not just the right lime that will make or break the best recipe for Caipirinhas. How you cut and muddle this zesty fruit is just as important.
When cutting the lime, cut off the pointy ends first, then halve and quarter it. Next, remove the white core, as this can make your Caipirinha overly bitter.
Once you’ve added the sugar to the lime, it’s time to muddle. When doing this, do not use brute force! Instead, go gently but hard enough to get a decent amount of juice out of the fruit. If you go at it too hard, you could bruise the peel and end up with an overly bitter drink.
You might also like: 11 Sublime Lime Cocktails you Simply Must Try
These two muddled cocktails often get mixed up (see what we did there? ha!), but there are big differences in both presentation and taste. While both drinks use fresh lime and sugar, the Mojito is different because it requires fresh mint, soda water, and rum, which is less herbaceous than the taste of cachaça. Both are definitely on our list of best summer cocktails that everyone should try at least once in their lives.
