At The Bar Guys UK we are initiating our weekly home bartending blog and what better way to start than the Classic Mojito.
Q. Why not go out and get someone else to do the work?
A. At £8+ for a Mojito in many of London’s cocktail bars drinking out gets expensive! Unless you are minted! Minted? Get it?
ANYWAY.
As Renton’s catchy catchphrase goes:
Choose Life.
Choose a job.
Choose Home Bartending.
But why?
If you buy your ingredients at the supermarket you will not pay more than £2 for every cocktail you drink at home inclusive of ice! Shop well, grab the bargains on spirits and you could lower that cost.
So for £10 you can effectively make 5 Mojitos the way YOU like them.
Bartending isn’t rocket science: If you can cook, you can mix cocktails, and through experimenting and trial and error you can achieve great results.
And if you love the Classic Mojito like we do at then I’m about to give you a great home recipe so you can achieve that boutique style Mojito taste but made in your kitchen and then you can put your feet up for an episode of Come Dine With Me or Luther, whatever butters your muffin.
The Mojito is still the most popular cocktail in the UK right now, but if you have ever been out to any cocktail bar you will know they present and taste very differently wherever you go and it’s often hard to find a Mojito in a bar with exactly the right balance for you.
Consistency is the key to a great cocktail, but how many times have you been to a bar and had the perfect cocktail only for it to be made differently by another bartender. Frustrating right? And the right drink for you is such a personal thing.
Badly mixed Mojito’s have the following in common:
*Are too watery.
*Are too strong.
*Are too sweet.
*Are too sour.
*Look terrible.
Like a good chef, when mixing a cocktail you must taste your drink (Life’s tough, eh?!) as you are building it so you achieve the right balance of flavour.
You can do this by grabbing the nearest straw, dipping the straw into the glass and covering the unsubmerged straw end with your index finger to create suction. You then lift the straw to your mouth, release your index finger, and try the cocktail.
Traditionally the Mojito consists of five ingredients: Rum, sugar (traditionally sugar cane juice), lime juice, soda water and mint. The combination of citrus, mint and the sweetness of the sugar are designed to compliment the kick of the rum.
Every bar does it differently and every bartender has their method. At The Bar Guys UK our method was developed via the great Lavish Lounge Bar in Weybridge, Surrey, sadly no longer operating!
Ben was taught how to mix drinks by the owner Julia Platia who liked the Mojito’s at her bar to be muddled, using golden rum, and cane sugar rather than sugar syrup. The Bar Guys still use this method today when planning and mixing Mojitos for events. So here it is:
Classic Mojito Recipe
*Take a long glass/high ball
*Take a lime, cut wedges (Usually 8 from each lime) and place 4-5 in your glass.
*Add 6-8 mint leaves
*Add two teaspoons of sugar (Light brown OR caster sugar is best)
*Muddle the ingredients (A muddler looks a bit like a rolling pin so you can use one of those if you have one. But muddling means gently mashing the ingredients together. However, the mint should only be bruised to release the essential oils and should not be shredded so don’t go too ninja on that poor mint!!)
*Now for the best bit: Add 50 ml of rum (Can be white rum or golden rum but not dark rum as it overwhelms the other flavours!)
*Fill the glass with 2/3 crushed ice (If you only can find cubed that’s fine it just means your drink may not look quite as long!)
*Stir with a bar spoon (These are the long spoons you may have seen in cocktail bars, however, so long as you have a spoon that can reach the bottom of the glass and mix the ingredients well that will be fine. A latte spoon fir instance would be fine but again go easy on the stirring otherwise that mint will shred!)
*Once everything is mixed and it looks pretty, cap the glass with another scoop of ice so it creates a mound on top of the glass.
*Garnish with a mint sprig or lime wedge.
*Voila! Your Mojito is ready. Drink it fast though before it starts melting!!
Any questions on making a Mojito or anything else cocktail-related feel free to email us on info@thebarguys.co.uk.
We look forward to hearing how you get on!
An instructional video for with one of The Bar Guys mixing a Classic Mojito will be online very soon so do look out for it via our social media channels.
Good luck and happy mixing!
TBG’s X