"new" caipirinhas

[Danne]

My boss asked me to create a drinklist for a special party. He told me to think about the caipirinha and Mojito. So a drink menue with drinks that contain muddled friut, alcohol, something sweet and cruched ice (and some sort of soda for longdrinks).

Well I've got some simple ideas, Changing the Liqur, changing the sugar to some flavored sugar syrup and changing the friut.

I just wanted to check with you guys (and gals) and see if you got any recipes that are really exiting and works really well.

We have allot of booze in the bar (my favourite for the moment is Minttu, a mintliqueure 50% alc) and a lot of syrups. The fruit we are worikng with is lime, lemon, orange, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries. So nothing really exiting. And ofcourse we can make all the different simplesyrups we want.

The bar is in a skislope, so im not really so found of the cruched-ice-drinks. But hes my boss hehe..

Ive just started whriting on the list and im only on some different spirits. If you got some thing more exiting recepies please hit me. I would really appreciate it!

[slkinsey]

I recently improvised a Caipirinha variation I thought was pretty good. I julienned around three slices of fresh ginger and muddled that in around a half-ounce of cachaça. I let that sit off to the side while I cut a small lemon in half and removed the center pith (I would have used limes, but didn't have any). Muddled the lemon in a rocks glass with superfine sugar, strained in the ginger-infused cachaça plus an additional few ounces, dropped in several large ice cubes, topped with a small mixing tin, shook the whole thing and poured it back into the rocks glass. The milder-flavored lemon let the ginger come through more than lime might have, and the fresh muddling provided a nice backbone of bite.

[Mayur]

Two useful additions to the muddled-drink arsenal are the occasional splash or two of Velvet Falernum and/or a healthy lengthening of the drink with Audrey's ginger beer (which can be shaken with the drink in a manner similar to what Sam described for his concoction, then topped up with soda if fizziness is desired; more flexible than store-bought ginger beer, and super-tasty!). A gin-gin mule served without the extra steps of shaking and straining is basically in the family of drinks you're talking about.

Assuming no falernum or ginger beer, basically anything with berries goes awfully nicely with a mojito or caipirinha; that said, my advice would be to puree berries, infuse your base spirit, and then strain unless you're really unsure of how many of each drink you'll be making or your customers get a kick out of watching you muddle berries as well as limes, mint, or what have you.

[KatieLoeb]

I just made myself a couple of Pineapple-Basil caipirinhas last night. Pretty easy and delicious. Agave nectar works well as a sugar substitute in this application.

I find that flavored syrups or concentrated juices are an easy way to vary a caipirinha. Sour cherry juice or syrup, apricot syrup, tamarind syrup, pomegranate juice, etc. I buy a lot of my syrups and flavorings at my local Middle Eastern market. Routin 1883 also make an entire line of excellent naturally flavored syrups you can easily order online. Just dial back the sugar if the syrup is a particularly sweet one.

[Reignking]

Leblon cachaca's site has plenty of different recipes:

http://www.liveloveleblon.com/caipirinhas-and-cocktails.aspx

The caipirinha-of-the-month section has some good ones, too -- I've made the strawberry and basil and loved that.