Rainforest Expedition

Welcome to blog post #3, folks! Where the new and shiny has barely worn off, but the looming specter of consistent content begins to take shape. Considering a third post makes me realize there is still a lot I need to figure out. The first week was easy, since it was really just an introduction, and the second week followed suit with more background material and a really simple cocktail favorite. But, where to go from there?

The biggest decision I need to make is how to choose a cocktail for each week's entry. Do I go with a progression--i.e., start simple (check!) and then gradually increase in complexity from there? Or, do I focus on cocktails with the same base for a few posts before moving on to a different spirit? Do I make my choices really topical or focus on the calendar--seasonal cocktails, holiday cocktails, etc.? (Valentine's Day strikes me as a fantastic jumping off point for choosing a cocktail to write about, for example. And Valentine's Day is tomorrow. It's just too bad I'm not organized enough to have figured that out in time for this week's blog post.)

Alas, as you will learn as you get to know me, I am not very big on "forward planning" (see: no Valentine's Day cocktail, above). (You will probably also learn that I like parentheticals.)

(A lot.)

So, I'm not really making this decision right now. In fact, I think I am deciding it is a decision that doesn't need to be decided. During the lifetime of this blog, I'm sure I will adopt many of the options expressed above, and others. There will be seasonal cocktails, spans of time I focus on a single spirit, cocktails that vary in complexity, and even holiday cocktails (just not Valentine's Day). Heck, I already have my Halloween cocktail planned out, and it's been on the calendar for months.

More often than not, though, I'm just going to blog about what I drank the weekend before, and I'm almost always going to make that choice based on what I felt like drinking at the time. Not very scientific, but it should get the job done.

This past weekend, I felt like drinking something completely new. Not only a new cocktail, but also a base alcohol I hadn't tried before--I wanted to experiment. I also wanted to drink something bright and cheery to complement the Spring-in-the-middle-of-Winter weather we are currently enjoying down in Southeast Texas. After a little bit of digging through my various cocktail books and iphone apps (more on those in a future blog post), I found exactly what I was looking for:

The Drink:  Caipirinha

Ingredients Used:

• Novo Fogo Cachaça Orgânica Silver - 2 oz
• 1/2 Lime, quartered
• 2 demerara sugar cubes

Recipe Courtesy of:   Charles Schumann, Tropical Bar Book, 1989

On one of my recent trips to the liquor store, I was drawn to a curious bottle in the rum section labeled "Cachaça." At the time, the name sounded vaguely familiar, but I had no idea what it was. I was actually looking for something called "rhum agricole" for a different cocktail recipe, but the bottle of Cachaça was too appealing to pass up. (I still haven't figured out what rhum agricole is, so you and I can explore that together at a later date.) From the Novo Fogo website:

The purest representation of organic sugarcane from Southern Brazil, this silver cachaça proves that terroir matters. The aroma of bananas immediately present, followed by pleasantly floral rainforest notes that shine through the spirit. Sea salt balances the cachaca’s tropicality, adding a savory quality and settling the overall impression to a mouth-watering sweet red pepper. This cachaça is rested in chemically-inert stainless steel tanks for one year to smoothen it without changing its flavor.

I mean... come on. You want to drink that immediately, don't you? The back of the bottle made it sound even more appealing, with its description of a quiet, coastal distillery nestled on the edge of a Brazilian rainforest. All natural, pressed and juiced from sugarcane cut by hand with a machete (no, seriously, it is all cut by hand), and fermented within 24 hours using organic yeast cultivated on site... That just screams adventure, right? I may never have an opportunity to visit the Brazilian rainforest, but I'd be damned if I was going to go another day without drinking my share of fermented, Brazilian sugarcane. I was certain it would be a life-changing experience.

In reality? My first sip of the Novo Fogo Cachaça, neat, was not life-changing. In fact, it tasted a lot like rum. Specifically, it was similar to an unaged, silver rum my wife and I picked up on our recent anniversary trip to Jamaica. The Cachaça was certainly much better, overall--something I could even see myself drinking on the rocks--but it was more familiar than I'd hoped. It had that same kind of "funk" that molasses-derived rums have, which was kind of surprising. I expected sugarcane to have a much different flavor profile than molasses. Luckily, though, Novo Fogo Cachaça was also fruitier than expected, with a ghostly hint of bananas, and I liked that. Further sips convinced me this was not a spirit to be written off as "just another rum," and I'm now quite fond of the funky, tropical notes contained in this bottle. 

But wait... I was supposed to talk about a cocktail, wasn't I? 

The Prep:

Making a Caipirinha is not much harder than mixing up last week's Gin & Tonic. There are only three ingredients, and they literally get mixed together and tossed into a glass. Simple. In fact, it may be more difficult to order a Caipirinha at a bar (pro tip: it's pronounced KY-pee-ree-nya) than it is to make it at home. 

The first step is to take your lime half and cut it into quarters. (If you don't have a lime half available, take a whole lime and cut it in half. Now you have two lime halves... zing!) You can also cut the lime into slices, as suggested on the Novo Fogo website, but I like the way the quarters hold their shape and float like green-scaled icebergs in the glass. Next, drop the quartered lime into your cocktail shaker and add two cubes of demerara sugar. If you can't find demerara sugar at your local grocery store, it is readily available online, though "Sugar in the Raw" is a decent substitute. Demerara is similar to Sugar in the Raw, but with more caramel flavor and less brown sugar-molasses.

The next step is to muddle the limes and sugar together in the cocktail shaker, which is very satisfying. Make sure you get all of the juice out of the limes, but also take care not to be too rough. If you blindly mash this cup, you will end up with a ton of lime pulp in the finished drink. This is fine if that's what you're after, but I prefer to limit the pulp, if I can. Once your limes and sugar are suitably combined, add two ounces of Cachaça, ice, and then shake vigorously to combine everything together. 

Have you ever wondered what people mean when they say "shake vigorously"? I have, too, but it's what people say, so I'm stealing it. In practice, I think the common rule of thumb is to shake it pretty hard and continue until the metal cup is cold enough that your fingers kind of hurt. At that point, your cocktail is ready. If people are watching you prepare the drink, shake it even harder and even longer, and don't forget to smile at them while pretending your aren't even paying attention to what you're doing. This will impress them and convince them you are really cool.

Unlike most cocktails I've tried, a Caipirinha is poured directly from the cocktail shaker into your drinking glass--in this case, a standard rocks glass (also known as an "old fashioned" glass). Just pour it all in--booze, limes, sugar, ice... everything. 

The Verdict:

Boy howdy, this is a delicious cocktail! I did not think the limited ingredients would lead to such a complex and eventful drink, but I was very happy to be proven wrong. The noob in me would like to say the drink is, overall, not dissimilar to a Margarita on the rocks--the sugarcane funk is reminiscent of the agave twang present in most tequilas (and, obviously, they both have a big lime thing going on)--but I think that description sells the cocktail short. Not because Margaritas are bad, but because the Caipirinha has a character all its own. More tropical and, for my money, more refreshing. It's kind of like what I think a Margarita would taste like if a Margarita went on vacation to Brazil, spent some time on the beach, overindulged in bananas and sweet drinks, met an exotic woman who loves board games, and then got lost on a self-guided tour of the rainforest, without its cellphone, never making it back to civilization.  

Sort of.