Episode 101: The Great Daiquiri Discussion With Josh Ibañez, Shannon Mustipher, and Garret Richard

The Daiquiri is an undisputed champion of the cocktail world, and its simple formula not only offers the promise of a complex character, but it’s a great starting point for endless exploration. For this episode, we take a deep dive into all things Daiquiri with a roundtable discussion including some of today’s top Daiquiri practitioners: Josh Ibañez, bar manager at Rumba in Seattle and an Imbibe 75 alum; Shannon Mustipher, another Imbibe 75 alumnus and author of Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails; and Garret Richard, co-author (with Ben Schaffer) of Tropical Standard, and bar manager at Sunken Harbor Club in Brooklyn.

Radio Imbibe is the audio home of Imbibe magazine. In each episode, we dive into liquid culture, exploring the people, places, and flavors of the drinkscape through conversations about cocktails, coffee, beer, spirits, and wine. Keep up with us at imbibemagazine.com, and on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. And if you’re not already a subscriber, we’d love to have you join us—click here to subscribe. 

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Paul Clarke 

Hey, everybody, welcome back to Radio Imbibe from Imbibe magazine. I’m Paul Clarke, Imbibe’s editor in chief. 

And before we get into this episode, I just wanted to pause for a moment to share with you that Radio Imbibe has just been named a finalist for this year’s Spirited Awards from Tales of the Cocktail in the category of Best Broadcast, Podcast, or Online Video Series. We’ve been a finalist every year since launching this podcast in 2020, and I wanted to thank everyone who’s tuned in to the podcast or appeared as a guest for all of your support along the way. We’ve now put together more than 100 episodes of this podcast over the past almost four years, and we hope you found them enlightening and enjoyable. And after almost four years of doing this, we’re also curious to hear your thoughts. If there are things you like about Radio Imbibe, or don’t like, or would like to hear more about in upcoming episodes, then please share those thoughts with us. You can contact me directly by email at Paul at Imbibemagazine.com.

And now, it’s summer. We all have our own reasons for being excited about the season. Maybe you’re a student or a teacher and you’ve got a break until fall. Maybe you’re a shorts and T-shirt kind of person and the season’s here when you can wear that 24 seven. Or maybe you just dig grilling outside and dripping watermelon juice on the grass and you look forward to that opportunity the rest of the year. 

For me, one of the thrills of summer is that pretty much every day presents an excellent reason to mix a Daiquiri. You can shake them all year, of course, and it’s not like I take a Daiquiri break during the cooler seasons, but there’s something about a late afternoon or early evening on a summer day when the sun is still high in the sky, I’m looking for something that’s cool and refreshing, but also tasty and satisfying in just the right way. In those moments, a Daiquiri or one of its cousins always fits the bill. 

So for this episode, I turned to three bartenders who share my love of the Daiquiri to ask them about their preferred approaches to mixing this classic cocktail. Returning to the podcast are Josh Ibañez, the bar manager at Rumba in Seattle and an Imbibe 75 alumnus, and Garret Richard, bar manager at Sunken Harbor Club in Brooklyn, New York, and co-author with Ben Schaffer of Tropical Standard. And joining us for the first time on Radio Imbibe is another longtime friend and rum loving bartender, Shannon Mustipher from Brooklyn, formerly of Gladys, and now to be found at a rum or cocktail festival near you. Now grab your cocktail shaker and get ready to follow along, because here is our Daiquiri deep dive for the summer of 2024. 

[music]

Paul Clarke

Josh, Garret, Shannon, welcome to Radio Imbibe. 

Joshua Ibañez

Good to see you again. 

Garret Richard 

Yeah. Thank you for having me back, Paul. 

Paul Clarke 

Thanks to you for taking the time for this. And, you know, I’ve gathered you here today virtually for one, and really only one reason, and that is that I absolutely love Daiquiris. If I’m hard pressed to pick like a favorite cocktail, the Daiquiri would definitely be a chief contender. And I know I’m not alone in this, and I’ve spoken with each of you separately about Daiquiris before, and we’ve had some of that coverage in the past in the magazine and online at imbibemagazine dot com. So for the purposes of this podcast, of this episode, I wanted to check in with you collectively as we start the summer of 2024 to talk about the Platonic ideal of the Daiquiri and how you and our listeners like to go about achieving that. So to get started, I think we almost need a mission statement from you, from each of you, kind of an overarching premise for the Daiquiri. I’ll pose this question: What is it about a perfectly made, perfectly composed Daiquiri, whatever that means to you, that makes you so damn happy to have one in front of you. Josh, I’ll start with you. 

Joshua Ibañez

I mean, a Daiquiri is one of those cocktails that, It’s just the standard, especially what we do over at Rumba. You know, I emphasize with anybody who trains behind that bar that, you know, it’s in our DNA, and it’s basically what keeps this bar going. I mean, if you’re smart about it, you can keep it at a low cost, but still know it’s nuanced, refreshing do seems like a lot of work I always used to, but it’s definitely one of those things where in a bar like Rumba, where people come in, you know, they’ll probably order Margarita, probably order another cocktail. And I, I’d gently nudge them over to the Daiquiri area because people are kind of going to love it, especially the way we do it here. And so I think it’s just such a great cocktail to introduce people to not only rum, but just something to even if you don’t want to think about it. at the same time. So it’s always like a plug and play kind of thing. So the diversity of it and the approachability of the Daiquiri is definitely what makes it really special to me and what we do here at Rumba. 

Paul Clarke 

Right, Right. And Garret, what about you? What is it about a Daiquiri where you say, Well, that’s nice. I’m so glad this exists in my world. 

Garret Richard 

The Daiquiri really is the final evolution of the kind of holy trinity of Caribbean mixology of having, cane spirit, lime, sugar. You know, this had historically existed before the Daiquiri in many different forms. And even, you know, if you can go even further back during the, age of exploration with punch. But really it does feel like the Daiquiri kind of is the final form of it. It’s served up, it’s a quick consumer product, almost like a good potato chip. It’s addictive. You want more of it and you want to revisit it. And it’s comforting. But really, the Daiquiri, I think, is a great showcase for both the spirit that you’re using and also the skill of the bar that’s creating it. And so that really creates this large kind of puzzle of like, okay, what are you going to do with the individual ingredients? What spirit you’re going to choose? And it creates endless combinations. I mean, it’s sort of like an infinite Rubik’s Cube. 

Paul Clarke 

Shannon, what about you? 

Shannon Mustipher 

Well, it’s a classic and it’s a showcase for rum. when I was working on opening up the program at Gladys in it’s around 2015 in Brooklyn, I realized there going to be a little bit of resistance to mostly rum cocktail program. And it’s because at the time, apart from Donna or Slowly Shirley, there really wasn’t much going on in the New York scene that would involve rum or take rum seriously. Death and Company was involved in introducing Smith and Cross to the bar community as well as Scarlet ibis. So there was like a few pockets of people making attempts at one focused program but had yet to really take off here. I like to say that New York is like a rum desert relative to California or Europe. You know, like up until like maybe five years ago when Velier was introduced to this market. And what it’s definitely become available, you know, buying rum here is like shopping at TJ Max, as opposed to going to Barneys. Right. And so I know it’s going to be really important to have at least one cocktail on our opening menu that would demonstrate that rum drinks can be elevated. They can be clean, crisp and refreshing. And we’ll talk a little bit more about technique later on. But one of the things we did was we would squeeze the lime juice a la minute for every Daiquiri we served. And so we’d create this sweet and sour mix with white sugar. And this is based on the old Cuban recipe where what I thought would happen and what I’ve witnessed is that the texture of the cocktail was lighter in the palate, when you compare that to using simple syrup. And yeah, it became my favorite because it was kind of like the way I was going to champion rum behind that bar and, going forward. 

Paul Clarke 

Right. And, you know, like Josh said, it’s something you can produce, something that’s very simple. You don’t need to overthink it. It’s just there. It kind of in its perfection the way it is. Having said that, the purpose of this episode is to overthink it just a little bit or to think it through, to think through the Daiquiri. Why don’t we get into what I want to do and what we typically do in these episodes? Let’s break it down component by component. Examine each of those individually. And then we’ll talk about the preparation technique coming in together. So I like to start with the less, not so much the star of the show. Let’s talk about the supporting players and the essential aspects of those. Let’s start with the lime. Can we talk about lime juice for a moment? Because, you know, sure, if you want to make a Daiquiri at home, you can just go to the grocery store, grab a lime, bring it home, get it, you’re ready to roll. What kind of considerations do you take when you’re thinking about the lime that goes into your Daiquiris? 

Joshua Ibañez

I mean, there’s obviously when you’re running a bar that’s doing a high volume like we do here, I mean, one of the main factors is the perishability of that. I mean, there’s different methods that people can do. You know, there’s a lot of articles about super juicing, which, you know, that produces a great product as well. But if you’re like someone just at home that wants to go home, cut up a lime, juice it, I mean, the effects of, you know, even from the same day to the next day to the day after, it’s pretty immense in terms of that flavor profile. And a lot of the time, especially when a drink is composed of three quarter ounce, one ounce, it’s only three things in there, that matters tenfold. And so a lot of the things like that do to some of our other bartenders is, you know, if the lime juice ends up, you know, going longer than we want it to, you know, have them taste it next to either same day juice and, you know, kind of just showcase that like, yeah, that’s a third of the cocktail there. And that’s why it’s such a huge component about like why you shouldn’t just, you know, oh, it’s fine. It tastes okay to me. You know, I tasted it, It’s okay. But when you have it side by side, it’s like a magnifying glass on the quality of how much that matters. 

Paul Clarke 

Shannon mentioned squeezing a la minute. Wht did you find that brings to the equation? Why did you make that choice?

Shannon Mustipher

So I mean, there’s a practical element to it, right? Like you get the oils from the lime in the cocktail and that kind of gives more lift to it. But also, I just want our guests to see that, I didn’t want them to see the bartenders picking up squeeze bottles and not knowing if it was like a pre-made or pre-packaged sour mix. I wanted to see those drinks being built from scratch, but yes, the oils are certainly offering something to the cocktail. A pre squeezed juice isn’t totally lacking ,depending on, you know, where it’s at. And in terms of how long it’s been squeezed by then. Yeah, the oils get into the drink and I thought that was a nice touch. 

Garret Richard 

Shannon, were you were you influenced by Julio Bermejo and Tommy’s in making that decision?

Shannon Mustipher 

You know, I wasn’t really paying attention to the correlation. It was more based on what I learned about how by the food in Havana, you know, was making various types of Daiquiris during prohibition and subsequently. So that’s like more focused on that. 

Paul Clarke 

Right, right.

Shannon Mustipher 

But I had worked at a bar prior that would use key limes to make their Tommy’s margarita, and they would also squeeze a la minute.

Paul Clarke

Right, right. And, you know, Garret, talking about limes. And I know this is a subject that you have thoughts on. 

Garret Richard

For a Daiquiri, we need to talk about a couple of different things, too, in order to get the right amount of sourness. One is the variety. And really the variety that is ubiquitous in the Daiquiri is a Persian lime. I think key lime is, the acidity of key lime sort of ranges quite a bit. When we’re talking about commercial agriculture, we tend to get, because of the way fruit is grown here in the United States, you tend to get nice, generalized sort of pockets of acidity for different fruits and for both lemon and limes. They both sit at 6 percent of what’s called titratable acidity, which is basically the acid content that you can taste on your tongue. Lime is awesome in that it’s built with both citric and malic acid while lemon is just citric. So malic has this very, like, strong kind of Granny Smith apple kind of note to it, which is why lime juice has this very complex, very assertive nature to it. It’s why you see it with highly flavored spirits like tequila and rum. But with lime juice specifically, I think it’s interesting that, we have this discussion of what is fresh because I think there really is depending on where you work. There are different definitions of what that means for Shannon’s program, and Gladys and Tommy’s, it’s our menu. You know, when Sasha Petraske was running Milk and Honey, there was like a 15 to 30 minute window for what fresh lime juice was. Dave Arnold, who I worked for for a number of years, at Existing Conditions, he tested people’s thoughts on lime and lemon and their freshness and found that, generally speaking, Americans preferred 4 hours aged juice, to Europeans that preferred immediate juice. And, you know, he also tested different methods of using a hand squeezer or electric. And, you know, all these, I think, are pretty important for service. I think at home, you don’t necessarily have to think as intensely about that kind of thing, because I think you can make adjustments on the fly. But it’s important if you’re going to serve a cocktail to your guests that is consistent on Monday as it is on Friday. And actually, you mentioned earlier super juice. I think that that’s my main issue with super juice is that some of the science behind it is a little shaky and that it’s largely been run through the influencer sphere and not necessarily through the rigors of service and that, you know, cutting lime juice with water and then, you know, making that water becomes 6 percent, but not necessarily adjusting the lime juice, which is going to sort of degrade over time. I don’t know. It’s a new technique. I think there’s probably some room to refine it. And also, the texture is not great for me in a Daiquiri, but I just needed to mention that since I was brought up.

Paul Clarke 

Right. Right, right. And, you know, to your point, you know, if you’re making Daiquiris at home, you don’t need to squeeze your lime juice four hours before you want the drink. I mean, some of us just don’t plan that, I don’t plan that far in advance. But a lot of people don’t. So, you know, it’s totally finding a kind of, take what you can out of out of this advice and then figure out how to do it at home.

Garret Richard 

Yeah. And also, I was on tour for Tropical Standard, I got to spend a day with Julio Bermejo. And he did have some interesting small tips on how they would hand-juice limes. They would always cut the nubs at the end because if they didn’t, it would be too much oil content for their Tommy’s margaritas. And I found that, you know, in just making Daiquiris at home, that is good practice. The kind of 4 hours, you know, during service model might be because when you’re juicing at a prep kitchen, you may not be cutting those little nubs off and maybe there’s just a little too much oil. And it kind of has to calm down a little bit after 4 hours. So those are very small details, I think make the Daiquiri interesting because they kind of exponentially grow into this larger impact on the drink If you don’t think about them. 

Paul Clarke 

Right. That’s really interesting, I didn’t consider that. Let’s move on to sugar. In the olden days, when I first started making my own Daiquiris at home, like, 20 years ago or 20 plus years ago, and when we’re watching bartenders making them, I would just put like, a glug of simple syrup into the shaker and go from there. How wrong was I to do that? From the knowledge that we have now? And what are your preferred alternatives today when thinking about the sugar for your Daiquiris? Shannon, we’ll go with you. 

Shannon Mustipher 

Well, I don’t think that you were wrong. I think it’s just a matter of kind of figuring out where your preference is. And again, because I knew perception of rum as being sweet and rum drinks being sweet was going to be a challenge for Gladys. I wanted every template to avoid that as much as possible, hence why we would do our, you know, sweet and sour slurry like a la minute in the tin as opposed to using simple syrup in the Daiquiri serve. 

Paul Clarke 

Right. And, Josh, you were going to say?

Joshua Ibañez

I completely agree with Shannon where I do think it comes from a place of preference and it, when it comes to, you know, a bar and how we’re implementing, you know, sugar in our Daiquiris it can go also into what type of rums are you using and how is that like, how clean do you want this Daiquiri, you how light do you want, how refined do you want it? Do you want to have more estherey rums in your blend? We make a blend here and because of our blend and some of them being like 3 to 5 years of age in that blend, you know, we do two parts white sugar, to one part demerara and then we actually use a sirop in there for a little bit of texture as well. So, I mean, we call it complicated here because it’s not simple either way, but it is it is something that’s worked for us in terms of the blends that we’re using and the texture that we want and the nuance from it that we want as well. You know, if you’re using something like, you know, like a Carta Blanca style rum, it’s not here anymore, but, you know, Cana Brava three or something like that or like Panama-Pacific, like you may want to utilize a different type of sugar, be it granulated, superfine or, you know, a blend of whatever. That’s really I feel like where you come from to the point of like sugar, think about the rums that you’re using alongside that and how that’s going to affect the cocktail overall. 

Paul Clarke 

Right. I think, you know, the thing that made me, you know, start stepping over the line and changing my Daiquiri practice was years ago, I had a conversation with Jeff Berry, Beachbum Berry, about the Daiquiri composition that they made at Latitude or that they continue to make at Latitude 29 New Orleans. And he was using dry sugar in there and he was using a special blend of granulated and turbinado. And he had his own formula for that. And that’s what I continue to do at home now. But I’ve also found that since granulated and turbinado have different texture and different, you know, grain sizes, they don’t dissolve at the same rate. So I’ll just take my sugars and toss it in the Vitamix, toss in my blender, and basically make my own super fine. Just blitz it, you know, for whatever 10 seconds. And I keep it in a jar in my kitchen with a little tag that says cocktail sugar. And I also use that for Old Fashioneds and stuff like that. Garret, sugar—what are your thoughts?

Garret Richard 

So that’s interesting that you mentioned powdered sugar, like making your own powdered sugar through the Vitamix at home, because it actually demonstrates that really the sweetener content of your Daiquiri, it’s largely dependent on how many grams of sugar is in it rather than, you know, syrup versus sugar. It really is, technically speaking, you know, how many grams are you putting in your Daiquiri and then what the water content is coming out of the shaker. For me, that sugar content right now is about 12 grams, which is behind the bar, the sugar, the white sugar we’re using, that’s like at a very level tablespoon that’s melted into the lime juice, which we use a milk frother to do that. Weirdly enough, if I took that same sugar, that same tablespoon and put it through a spice grinder and grind it into a powdered sugar like you did, it would be less sweet because it would actually be less weight of that sugar. And if I tried to sweeten with the same amount of simple syrup, it would have to be about five eights, which is right, right under three quarters of an ounce of simple syrup. Right in between, you know, half an ounce and three quarter. So really, it is it is about sugar content and what you’re using, like if you know the sugar content of something like an orgeat, maybe it’s 66 percent sugar and you know where that sort of sweet spot is for you, you can then kind of run that that syrup down a sliding scale, but for me, I do like sugar a lot for the textural reasons and for the water content issue, because many of the rums that we’re working with now are lower proof than they were in the even the 50s and 60s, let alone the 1930s and forties. Generally speaking, a lot of rums lived in that sort of 92 to 110 proof range, and a lot of them are nerfed down to 40 percent, mostly for tax reasons. And you know, because of the way corporate shipping happens around the world, it’s easier to ship a spirit that’s at 40 percent. But what that means for bartenders recreating vintage recipes is that we have to make some of these decisions to get around some of these issues that are outside of our control. But a Carta Blanca Daiquiri with sugar instead of syrup kind of allows you to work within that 40 percent proof a little bit better and taste that spirit as opposed to just watering it down with limeade. I think the most boring sort of interpretation of a Daiquiri to me is something that’s just a lime heavy Daiquiri. That’s not sweet. It’s that’s easy to do, I think there’s a difference between acid forward and dry, like significant difference between those two things. 

Paul Clarke 

And it is that whole kind of thing where, as you’re talking about a little bit sugar. Yeah, I bring sweetness, and that’s obviously why we incorporate it, but also brings that lovely mouthfeel to it. It brings a texture to a Daiquiri. And, you know, again, you know, back in the early days of making Daiquiris, I would err on the side of dryness and that kind of lime forward thing and thinking, oh, that’s how it’s supposed to be. But it wasn’t really until I started thinking about composition of the Daiquiris that I was able to get both the sweetness level I was looking for in that kind of texture I was looking for and realized it’s just a much better balanced cocktail at that point you mentioned.

Shannon Mustipher 

I’d like to interject really quickly.

Paul Clarke 

Yeah, go ahead. 

Shannon Mustipher

Because I recently demonstrated at BCB that different types of sugar in a Daiquiri serve, when I was doing it with Denison aged white, which is bottled a little bit lower on the ABV side, but does have a little punchier flavor by virtue of the, you know, the pot-still Jamaica rum component. And when I tasted it, people at the booth on the cocktail that I use like a you know, a la minute slurry versus the simple syrup, the flavor of the rum disappeared in the cocktail with the simple syrup because of that additional water content that was basically kind of chipping away at the ABV. 

Garret Richard 

Sugar is sort of an interesting part of the Daiquiri story because the original sort of written spec for it what was called Ron a la Daiquiri from a party that Jennings Cox threw, which I don’t think Jennings Cox invented the Daiquiri. I think it probably existed before this party happened. It’s you know, it’s rum, lime and sugar. It existed in the Caribbean. But this original sort of party spec, which is talked about in Jeff Berry’s book Potions of the Caribbean, used brown sugar and not white sugar. And years later, in the 1950s, a publicist that worked with Jennings Cox was sort of upset in the press that the Daiquiri kind of got bastardized from that original spec. So it is it is interesting that kind of the proto version of the Daiquiri used this very molasses-ey probably, you know, beautifully complex sugar from Cuba. And then it became something sort of light and bright during the cantinero era. But you know, sugar, it shows that sugar has a huge impact. Like what sweetener you’re using on how the rum is going to be perceived and how it’s going to come out in the rest of the cocktail. 

Shannon Mustipher 

And with that in mind, Garret, just to piggyback a little bit, I considered a Caipirinha and the Canchanchara, you know, Canchanchara is built in a glass with honey and lime and then most likely aguardiente. But, you know, I think that kind of spec was probably closer to maybe the flavor of the Ron a la Daiquiri that could be using brown sugar because the honey, depending on what it was, can probably add like a little more of a aroma or an earthy element to it relative to white sugar, where all that stuff is just kind of, for lack of a better way of putting it just stripped away. And it’s not really a lot of personality to the the sugar at that point.

Paul Clarke 

Now, let’s get into rum, because you can’t make a Daiquiri without the rum. And the Daiquiri, of course, is originally a Cuban cocktail, or at least Jennings Cox version thereof. So a Cuban or Cuban style rum is an obvious and always delicious choice. But we live today in 2024 in a rum wonderland out there with so many options to choose from. What are some of the decisions you make about the rum going into a Daiquiri based on your guest, your taste at the time, etc.? Shannon, why don’t we start with you.

Shannon Mustipher 

Well I’m notorious for being heavily biased towards pot-still Jamaica rum and it started with Smith and Cross and …

Paul Clarke

And I am with you on that one. Let me just say that.

Shannon Mustipher

I mean here’s the thing, I mean you look at that style of rum or even let’s say rums from Grenada such as River Saint Antoine, or if you want to dial it back even further, clairin. And, you know, prior to the industrial phase of rum and column distillation, most rums had some of those characteristics. And by that I’m talking about highly aromatic, slightly funky, grassy vegetal. If we’re talking about Demerara rums, then you have the added dimension of kind of those deep, rich, concentrated fruit, like I would say, a berry and earth flavor notes. And then, you know, they have the aging and blending that goes on there. But, you know, the quote unquote, Cuban style rums that are available to us here in the US currently don’t taste like those early Bacardis anyway. So I don’t think that they’re the best choice for it. And so I, I have a tendency to incorporate either a clairin or Jamaica rum into a rum blend. If I’m doing a Daiquiri on a menu and if I’m interacting directly with the guests and we have a rapport and they’re in the mood for something adventurous, I might just use rum fire as a base, you know, I don’t know if I put …

Joshua Ibañez

Like, whoa.

Shannon Mustipher

That on a menu, but if I have a guest really likes their rums, then you know, that’s what I’m going to offer them. 

Paul Clarke 

Yeah, right. I think one of the beauties of that is, you know, rum is one of those categories. Like if you’re getting into bourbon and you taste like a really nice bourbon, like, wow, that’s a nice bourbon. I can kind of see the gradation. If you have somebody who’s unfamiliar with tequila and you give them really good tequila, like that’s that’s really cool. If you have somebody who’s unfamiliar with rum and you show them a really great Jamaican rum, you’re going to scare the crap out of them because, you know, rum is the category that has so much expressiveness. And, you know, some of that expressiveness really is you know, it’s like a it’s like a giant puppy. It’s so enthusiastic and it’s it’s wonderful and it’s fun to play with, but it can be overwhelming if you’re not prepared for that. Josh—rum and Daiquiris. And I know that you you take an approach on rum with your Daiquiris.

Joshua Ibañez

Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, I think one of the most important things, again, like over at Rumba, is, is making a Daiquiri that is going to be in that sense like approachable but still you have someone like Garret or Shannon coming in here that are like, Oh, I can take the taste and nuance in this, so your average person can come in who doesn’t ever drink rum. They’re very pessimistic about if it gets too sweet because all these things and, you know, I usually tell them like have our Daiquiri, I’ll buy it for you if you don’t like it. And yeah, like I said before, 95 percent of the people enjoy it. So it’s like finding that sweet middle ground of how do we add nuance to this while still making it very approachable. And for us, we do a blend and a lot of that is trying to replicate that older Cuban style and we use about seven different rums in our blend. But a lot of it is, you know, the base of it being Spanish style rums, like Ron Barrallito and Don Q, like our two main factors in that. But then, you know, we do other blends like Planteray three star, 10 to 1 white. We use Saint Lucian Rum Bounty, and then we use two different types of Jamaican rum just to give it that little edge and to give it that, again, like that depth that you want, that little bit of complexity, but not to scare people. It’s just to be there and to be like, Oh, okay, cool. Like it’s still riding along with me. It’s not just like a dry Daiquiri. It’s not just like a light Daiquiri. It’s a Daiquiri with character and you can drink like two or three, you know, And so we use that. We use an unaged Wray & Nephew and we also use Smith & Cross as those two factors because I wanted like kind of in on that, I wanted something with a little more barrel to it, a little more age. But also they’re different distilleries. I mean, they have different flavor compounds. I mean, there’s a whole thing about where, you know, Smith & Cross comes from. We’re not going to get into that. But it’s still two different styles that are that kind of complement each other on the Jamaican realm to add into the Spanish style rum. So that’s kind of my theory of making it like clean, light, refined with some edge to it and character to it, but not too much, just enough to differentiate it from an average Daiquiri made with Probitas, which is awesome. But like, you know, you want to kind of for us, we want to add a little bit more to it. 

Paul Clarke

Right. Garret, what’s your approach at Sunken Harbor Club? 

Garret Richard 

The approach at Sunken Harbor Club for the Daiquiri is to show off different forms of how it existed historically. Right now, we’re doing something that I would say is very close to the spirit of something that would be Cuban. It’s, you know, it’s using sugar. It’s using Rivers rum as a sort of an accent to bring out some of the, you know, kind of older style of Carta Blanca as it was made, you know, almost 100 years ago, which was pot stilled in Cuba, very different from what is being made now. But it was a combination. The combination of what we’re using is Rivers and Hamilton White Stash, shaken, up and we add a little bit of a shiso essence to the Hamilton White Stash so it echoes things like the Mojito and those types of flavors, but, you know, in a different way. Previously we had run a Daiquiri. So all of these are called special Daiquiris. So this, the shiso one was called Special Daiquiri number two. On our original menu, we ran special Daiquiri number one, which was actually done in the style of the Mai Kai, which in the thirties and forties you started to see in mostly Don The Beachcombers bars, Daiquiri type drinks that were blended with a very small amount of crushed ice and then poured into a very delicate glass. So in essence, there is some kind of broken up ice in the glass and it’s kind of halfway between being up and on crushed ice. And we’re actually doing it, we’re doing a Don the Beachcomber drink like that right now called the Tonga Punch, which is, you know, essentially a Don’s mix agricole Daiquiri. But I think playing around with the form is very interesting because there’s a lot of eras of the Daiquiri and at some point we have blenders behind the bar. We definitely want to pay tribute to the frozen Daiquiri as well. So that’s the idea of doing like a series.

Paul Clarke

Right. Right now, you know, we’re talking about this, raising this conversation at the beginning of summer. Does your consideration of the rum you use change based on season or on mood or anything like that? I wonder what are different reasons you might search out a different rum or a different mix of rums from the ones that you’re accustomed to use? 

Shannon Mustipher 

For me, it’s value. I’m no longer attached to a bar program, so I work with a few brands and various types of education and activations across the country. So each market will have a different selection of types of rums available to them and hence a different palate or a different perception of it. So, you know, I’ll just change the rum, sort of a composition of the Daiquiri serve based on a venue. And of course, like, you know, this sponsor I’m working with at the time will be a major element in the serve. But for me, you know, I could come up with on average like 20 or different types of serves over the course of a year, depending on where I’m activating. So, you know, I do my best to kind of think of who I’m serving and where I’m at and what they’re accustomed to and that serve can on one hand might be something that fits within their comfort zone. But I also kind of take them a little bit outside of it. 

Paul Clarke 

And Josh, you know, we live in Seattle, so, summer here is different from summer everywhere else. You know, it’s going to be like 60 degrees today. So, you know, does that factor into your consideration when you’re thinking of like a Daiquiri for a Seattle audience versus what you might have done when you were working in Houston. 

Joshua Ibañez

Yeah. I mean I think here it, it’s, it’s so different. Yeah. It’s from being in Houston where it’s hot six, seven months out of the year unbearably and unfortunately. But here even just being at Rumba with having all of these rums, I mean we, we have our own thing, just kind of like Garret was talking about where, you’ve been here, it’s like we have a number one, number two and number three. And that’s a good way to kind of put people through a Daiquiri school and a little bit of history with what we do when it comes to seasonality. I mean, we have a beautiful summer here in Seattle. It’s three months out of the year. It comes and goes pretty quick and we’re serving honestly kind of the same styles of drinks for the most part, especially with the Daiquiri. I mean, we have our seasonal cocktails like every other bar. But I think what makes us special is that we can have our small menu of Daiquiris like that. We kind of talk everyone through. And then from there, I mean, we’re serving rum all the time, so we’re serving with it probably, I would say maybe 10 to 15 percent of what we’re selling is neat pours, and a lot of times we have some great regulars that are willing to, you know, I’ll have a $30 Daiquiri with this really nice rum. And that’s where a lot of the conversation opens up with following, like, what types of rums do you like, what are the styles? And then let’s play around. Let’s see what a Daiquiri is like with it. Let’s see how our specs should be adjusted for it. And our guests are really receptive to that, especially the ones that are coming in here a couple of times a week that we love. So I wouldn’t really necessarily say we adjust our Daiquiri for, say, seasonality wise because we serve Daiquiris three six five days a year. That’s what we’re about. We ride the Cuban line of cocktails and the influence from that. And we like to be a refuge for people during those nine months out of the year where it is rainy and where it is colder. And and it’s just like, Yeah, man, we’re going to make you a stellar Daiquiri and then we can still like play around with whatever rum you want to do and it you really just go all over the place all the time, which I personally really love that it’s not specific to a certain time. 

Paul Clarke 

There you are. We’ve gone through our sugar, we’ve gone through our lime juice, we’ve gone through our rum. You’re ready to put together a Daiquiri, what’s your steps? This is the technique part of the part of the process here. How do you assemble them and how do you bring this cocktail home? Garret, why don’t we start with you? 

Garret Richard

Yeah, sure. In making a making a classic Daiquiri behind the bar, at Sunken Harbor Club, or if you’re reading my book, Tropical Standard. Start building it in a small tin. I always add a little bit of salt to 90 percent of my drinks because I think it helps your palate download all the flavors of a cocktail very well. Like the sweet and sour, the bitter, the strong. So I start with a couple of drops of saltwater. Then I add my sugar. In this case, it’s going to be a tablespoon of white sugar. The tablespoon is level, so it’s about 12 grams. Then I’m going to add the lime juice, which is strained. We didn’t really talk about this, but I think strained versus unstrained, you just have to keep it consistent with what you’re doing. Strained has pulp, o there is some displacement that’s going to happen with pulp that you’re probably going to need to use more of the strained lime juice to get the right amount of acid that you need to get. But it’s just a texture thing for me. Pour lime juice into the into the sugar that’s in the tin and then I just use a milk frother that I charge with a USB charger on the bar and we milk froth it so that the lime and the sugar melts together. If you don’t have a milk frother but you’re in a tropical bar, you can use a Hamilton Beach blender on a low setting and put that tin in in there and melt it that way. We do that sometimes behind the bar. Once those two things are properly melted, then you can add your spirit. And then we shake the cocktail with a two by two cube that we just take, you know, get one of those silicone molds, freeze it. So we use one, two by two cube for texture, and then we use two small cubes for the dilution. If you just shake with a big cube, it’s it can be a little bit hard to get the proper dilution. You have to really kind of ride that shaker. So this is kind of the best of both worlds. This shake was developed when I was working at Existing Conditions, and it’s the shake that we use at Sunken Harbor Club for all of cocktails. I would say, you know, shake it until there is a hard frost on the tin and then, you know, depending on the mood, I think it can be strained either through the strainer that you’re using or if you really want it to be kind of elegant, you can strain it through a fine strainer. I think that’s a personal choice on that. 

Paul Clarke 

Right. 

Joshua Ibañez

I actually, I like that method a lot too, the one Garret’s using with the large cube and a couple of small ones. We do we go through many, many Daiquiris here unfortunately we can’t supply that many even in the silicone cube, but I think what’s, what’s beauty about it is you can have so many different techniques with ice and everything and and again, like I don’t think there is one specific total right way to make the Daiquiri. I think that’s the beauty of it is that ability to kind of move things around. And for us, I’m pretty straightforward. You know, we have our complicated syrup and we do a half ounce. And then because of our blend and because of the ages that are a little bit higher, we tend to do a full ounce of lime juice normally—before we changed our blend, it was three quarter ounce—now full ounce of same-day lime juice to  two ounces of our rum blend, our Cuban blend, quote unquote Cuban blend. And then we have a Scotsman, so we have kind of like one inch cubes, give or take, and then we fill that up to the tin, shake hard, it gets like seven, 10 seconds. And, you know, always making sure you’re kind of like using the flick of your wrist along with extending. And so making sure you’re getting like a good vortex to it and making sure that you’re properly aerating it because that is, you know, one of the biggest things that I tell our staff is that, you know, nobody wants a sad Daiquiri. That’s, you know, that’s not a lot of bubbles and a lot of froth. You got to have that. You got to have that texture, whether there’s one person in the bar or whether you have, you know, 70 people in the bar, those Daiquiris have to come out the same way every time. We all know and we’re doing a podcast about this drink matters. And so yeah we fine strain it through there. It’s try not to make it too complicated while at the same time paying attention to the details and the technique that you’re doing for it. 

Paul Clarke 

Right, right. Shannon, anything to add on the technique and, and production of the process?

Shannon Mustipher 

Well, I described how I did it at Gladys. I typically don’t do that at activations, because by nature the speed of service is such that we’re sending out anywhere from 40 to 60 drinks a minute. So, you know, if we’re in a venue that has access to a Hamilton Beach stand blender, that’s our default because the Daiquiri is typically our welcome serve in those instances. And we want to make sure that we can get something in people’s hands, you know, within at least a minute of them approaching a bar, even if it’s just like a snack area or something. Half sized. So in the case of using the Hamilton Beach stand mixer, use the same specs, but I’m typically using syrup. But again, as I alluded to, and I’m also typically using higher proof rums and by higher proof 45% ABV and above and sometimes 50. It’s three quarter ounce of the sweet and sour each respectively that goes into the tin. We straw taste before we send out the first couple of rounds and make sure the balance is where we want to be. we add our spirit sometimes as a 1.5 ounce pour or a two ounce pour, again depending on rums and working with them. Then like a very scant—everybody has different size hands, but like a scant scoop of pebbled ice, like it shouldn’t be more than you can hold in the palm of your hand and then the flash blend is very quick. We’re talking about 10 seconds, maybe 12, because the dilution can happen very quickly if you’re not careful. And then once it’s mixed up, we fine strain it into a chilled coupe. And I don’t typically do garnish on it. I kind of prefer to just have it be unadorned. 

Paul Clarke 

Yeah. I think, you know, I’m glad you touched on that because I was thinking about garnish, but also I was thinking about just like the serving of a Daiquiri, like the way you see it in front of you. And I’ve long been trying to launch this out into society where we think about Daiquiris the same way that they think about beer at McSorley’s, where you sit down, you order a Daiquiri, and two glasses, two small glasses wind up in front of you, because really the only thing better than a Daiquiri is a second Daiquiri. And the Daiquiri is also like supposed to be consumed, as with any cocktail, cold, fresh, when it’s like just at its moment of perfection. It is so satisfying, so refreshing at that moment. And, you know, without the garnish, I feel like, you know, sometimes, yes, garnish looks pretty in photos. It’s great for your Instagram, but it’s not always the best thing for the cocktail. Do you garnish Daiquiris at your bars? Josh, Garret? 

Joshua Ibañez

No, no garnish on any of our Daiquiris. Everything is served up in a coupe over here. And I agree with that. I think it doesn’t need really anything else. I mean, you could put lime wheel or a lime wedge, but when you’re balancing the cocktail yourself, I don’t think it needs anything. I think it’s it’s great the way it is. 

Garret Richard

It depends on what type of Daiquiri. The elephant in the room that nobody’s talking about is the frozen, which, which I am pro. And I actually think most bartenders don’t like it. Most bartenders talk smack about frozen Daiquiris because they actually can’t execute them well during service and they wouldn’t charge $20 for their specs for it. It requires a lot of equipment and, you know, thought to do well. But the frozen Daiquiri is, not to stray too far from your question, but I’m going to circle back to it. Frozen Daiquiri when it came out, when the blender was created, was like the liquid nitrogen of its day. It was very high end technology. It was the first time that sort of electricity was required to make a cocktail behind the bar. And you see this in the writing of Charles H. Baker. Garnishes, if you look in the thirties and forties on Frozen Daiquiris, were super elaborate and it was really it was a high end item. When we were writing Tropical Standard, we found a lot of press clippings about the Plaza Hotel. You know, all these, rich people venues that were serving, you know, the frozen Daiquiri out of the Waring blender. And they were doing very elaborate, like cutting an entire lime into very small thin slices that were like surrounding the entire glass. Same thing with the strawberry Daiquiri. Everyone thinks the strawberry Daiquiri is like a sign of the seventies and eighties and like the downfall of the cocktail movement. But there were sightings of it in the 1940s, which is which is pretty incredible. And I think that’s one area where I think garnish can be interesting and lovely, even even the simpler Constante Ribulegua frozen Daiquiri is like the number four using, you know, the maraschino cherry and the lime together. Like that looks really nice. But in an up drink, I don’t necessarily want that. 

Paul Clarke

Right, right. And I’m glad you brought up the frozen Daiquiri because, you know, it was something that I wanted to bring up because you’re absolutely right. The frozen Daiquiri is something that we very frequently talk smack about. And I mean, I will say for good reason, a lot of times most of the frozen Daiquiris you encounter out there in the wilderness are awful. But, you know, I recall several years ago when I was fortunate enough to go to Floridita in Havana, and where they’re just cranking out one frozen Daiquiri after another. And you realize this is really a cultural contribution at this point. You know, if you’re sitting in this very humid, hot bar in Cuba, sipping your frozen Daiquiri, then you’re kind of at a different plane of existence and you can really the reason for for the existence of that drink. So the Daiquiri is, of course, open to interpretation, and it’s always been that way. And that’s kind of the of the Daiquiri in some ways. People don’t seem to get as hung up on Daiquiri proportions or adjusting ingredients the way they do if you’re talking about a martini or a negroni or something like that. So with that in mind, we just talked about the core Daiquiri. What other options do you like to bring into play in terms of other citrus or introducing liqueurs or fruits? What are some of your Daiquiri variations that still fit within that Daiquiri world? Garret, why don’t we start with you. 

Garret Richard

Yeah I mean, we have a lot of little Daiquiri variations in Tropical Standard. There’s a lot on the menu at Sunken Harbor Club. But one that was really difficult. was the Derby Daiquiri from the Mai Kai, which I was fascinated by it because it was it was a huge drink for rums of Puerto Rico. There was entire ad campaigns based on the Derby Daiquiri. Mariano Licudine, who is the head bartender of the Mai Kai, won a competition for it and became like a spokesperson for Rums of Puerto Rico because of that. So I have probably in my home right now, like three or four magazine ads about this one cocktail in the mid century. when media was starting to not care as much about, covering those types of things. But the challenge with the Derby Daiquiri is throwing in orange juice into the lime sugar rum mix. And that can be very difficult because orange is low in acid, orange is water essentially. So how do you get around some of those issues? And we used the Derby as an opportunity to talk about some of the techniques, the modern techniques that I’ve been doing at the Exotica pop up and at Existing Conditions, which is acid adjusting and then sugar adjusting, which is sort of the opposite of that one. Acid is taking something like orange juice and making it act like lime juice, like bringing up to the 6% acidity of lime juice. And sugar adjusting is taking orange juice and turning it into a syrup like simple syrup. And we actually show both versions and we show a frozen and a shaken, up version of the Derby because at some point over time, the Derby at the Mai Kai became a frozen cocktail. And I actually like it better frozen. And I think like a very tart orange slice with like really nice, like Carta Blanca or even something like Denison white is delicious. But both forms were challenging. And, you know, orange juice is sort of the bane of a lot of bartenders existence. If you, you know, if you knock it around a little bit at all, it’ll participate. 

Paul Clarke 

Josh has his thoughts on orange juice and I want to hear that. And but also your thoughts on Daiquiri variations. 

Joshua Ibañez

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people who know me, one of my favorite Daiquiri variations is the banana Daiquiri. I mean, I. I love the Daiquiri, and that was like a lot of the reason when we opened up Inside Passage, I didn’t know where to get one in the city of Seattle. I mean, I mean, if there is one, let me know. Paul. But. 

Garret Richard

Is it, is it up or is it frozen. 

Joshua Ibañez

It’s frozen. We do have frozen banana Daiquiris here.

Garret Richard

Thank God. Okay. Thank you.

Joshua Ibañez

Yes. And it was when I you know, it’s a funny story between like Jen Akin and I we talked about and I wanted, I insisted on a Vitamix being in the bar for that frozen Daiquiri. I didn’t want to use the emulsifying blender, and it’s awesome. I mean, you can aerate it in such a way that it’s light, fluffy, but still has that like heavy banana flavor, you know, we use piloncillo syrup so you got a little more depth to it as well along with coconut cream and then a blend of Bajan rum and Jamaican rum, of course, and Worthy park because I think like that’s some of my favorite banana esters that are coming out of Jamaican distillery. And it’s great. I mean, it’s a lot of people are, you know, usually not sure about it. And then we always have like a tiny bit left whenever we do a blend of it. And so we complementary give it to guests as they’re just sitting at the bar and, you know, they love it. And it’s, it’s one of my favorite styles of Daiquiris that I think doesn’t get enough credit and it’s not done well enough. I think in terms of like when you go to a city and you just want a banana Daiquiri, it’s something that should be made more often. 

Paul Clarke 

Right. Shannon, what about you? 

Shannon Mustipher

I mean, I think you already know to answer that question, Paul, because the Parasol was covered in Imbibe magazine, right? 

Paul Clarke 

We have indeed covered the Parasol. Yes. 

Shannon Mustipher 

Yeah, so it’s a banana and pineapple Daiquiri.

Joshua Ibañez

Oh man.

Shannon Mustipher 

And it’s something that I created at my local bar, King Thai.

Joshua Ibañez

That sounds awesome.

Shannon Mustipher 

And it was like a really kind of serendipitous moment because I was at the bar. A friend of mine that has a jam company came in with her first batch of banana jam, and she gave it to me to taste. And without thinking, I just handed it to the bartender, gave him a spec and the Parasol was born. So that’s my signature Daiquiri. It’s, you know, two o unces of rum. Depending on the banana product, I’m using bit of liqueur, let’s say, like Giffard or Spiribam’s new banana liqueur, that’s half an ounce, half an ounce of pineapple juice, fresh is best, and you know, three quarter of lime. I traditionally shake it but if it’s an activation serve I will flash blend it and it gets garnished with fresh nutmeg on top. And the fun thing about it is that the nutmeg and the banana kind of gives it a little more substance to it. But the banana also kind of gives like the texture that I think makes it really nice, even if it’s not frozen, it kind of lives in this territory between like, very crisp, clean, shaken Daiquiri and something that has a little more decadence on the palate. It’s fun frozen as well, but I typically do it as a shake or flash blend. So there’s that. And then I’m also a big fan of Isle of Martinique. You know, Don the Beachcomber was known mostly for like his Zombie and punches, Trader Vic was known for his Daiquiri variations, and I kind of include the Mai Tai in that. So Isle of Martinique I really love because I love agricole rum and it’s a serve, I don’t ever see anywhere. I’m like, You guys should get into that. 

Garret Richard

We make it. 

Shannon Mustipher

Oh snap. 

Shannon Mustipher 

Outside yours, too. I also love to incorporate passion fruit when I can, Chinola makes a wonderful liqueur that I love like the acidity of. And so I think it’s really easy to build into a Daiquiri without becoming too cloying. Okay, so I’ve never attempted this, but while we were talking about modifiers, I’m thinking myself, Where’s the coconut Daiquiri? 

Paul Clarke

Mm. 

Shannon Mustipher

I know coconut rum has like a terrible rap over the years. I’ve done my coconut washed spirit. So I’m like, Why did I never make a coconut Daiquiri? Where do you guys stand on that? Is that like something that seems viable? I think it’s such a tricky ingredient.

Garret Richard

Yeah. When I was working at that, you know, with the Raines Law Room guys at Exotica, we were always washing spirits with coconut oil. And yeah, they, they made it quite a bit with coconut oil wash there. I think you could even go one step further and do a coconut water syrup where you …

Shannon Mustipher

I like that idea. 

Garret Richard

… measure the sugar content of the coconut water and turn it into a simple. Yeah. And I think that’s great. But you’re right. I don’t think there’s like a name for that out there. 

Shannon Mustipher

I think is so pegged to like the Pina Colada and the painkiller. It’s almost like that’s where people automatically take that ingredient. But I like, maybe we can produce a coconut Daiquiri. 

Josh Ibañez

Definitely. I think that one of our bartenders here did like a special, with 10 to 1. And they did a coconut oil washed 10 to 1, which tasted great. And one of my other ones that I kind of just did a one off for like Negroni Week because at Rumba, doing like the Kingston Negroni and then but doing like toasted coconut infused into like Smith & Cross and that was actually extremely delicious. And we didn’t make a we didn’t make a Daiquiri with it. We should have. But I put it in the freezer after it was made and it was just like, it was awesome.

Paul Clarke

Oh, wow.

Josh Ibañez

So well, a toasted coconut Daiquiri with some like the Jamaican rum toasted coconut Daiquiri sounds dope.

Paul Clarke

So are you doing like, a toasted coconut Negroni at that point?

Josh Ibañez

Yeah, that’s what we were doing.

Paul Clarke

We’re, we’re getting off the Daiquiri frame, but, but there is, there is nothing wrong with a toasted coconut negroni. 

Josh Ibañez

No, coconut and Campari go hand in hand. If you haven’t tried it yet, you definitely should. 

Shannon Mustipher

Throw some lime in there. And now you got a paper plane riff.

Josh Ibañez

There you go. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love coconut Daiquiris the few times I’ve had it. And that’s that’s a good point to bring that up because yeah, there isn’t like a definitive coconut Daiquiri that’s like historic or anything like that, at least in my knowledge. 

Garret Richard

I mean, the closest thing is like technically is Jeff Berry has the Coco-Naut, which is like a Daiquiri, but you’re replacing the sweetener with Coco Lopez.

Josh Ibañez

Yeah, yeah, there’s that.

Garret Richard

Very different. Very different drink. 

Paul Clarke

Yeah, well, may. Maybe the summer of 2024 is when the coconut Daiquiri happens, in that case. So we’ve talked about options, many approaches to making them. Here you are. I need you to go here a mentally with me. You’re literally on a desert island, Right? And if there’s. Yeah, I mean, the Daiquiri is the ultimate desert island cocktail, because let’s say you’re on a desert island. What else would you want? What is your personal desert island Daiquiri look like? If you you know, this is the the one cocktail you’re going to go back day after day for the remainder of your time in this planet. What is what is your personal favorite Daiquiri look like, Josh? 

Joshua Ibañez 

I think it’s funny you were talking about the garnishes Garret kind of touched on the number 4, the Floridita Daiquiri and that is without a doubt like my, my favorite Daiquiri. I love like a frappe on that. Get it nice and frozen. I don’t know. These bartenders are talking bad about frozen drinks, but if you know how to make them, they’re awesome. And I just had one at Anvil two days ago. And it’s just what it’s like when you know how to make it proper because unfortunately, yes, it’s kind of bad rap, a lot of frozen drinks. But, you know, you have a little heavier on the maraschino. I like Cuban style blend that we use two tablespoons of like just raw sugar blended in a Vitamix, frappe it up. You know, you got your lime and your cherry on there. I can drink that every day and and hopefully, I don’t know, there’s maybe not electricity on this desert island, but I would love to make them all the time. 

Paul Clarke 

You know, maybe there’s a little solar panel there.

Joshua Ibañez

Yeah. And yeah and it’s hot. So I’m a I’m a Texas boy through and through and I just love things that are very, very cold. And I love the fact that it melts as you’re drinking it. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s my desert island cocktail for sure. The number four, Floridita Daiquiri.

Paul Clarke 

Right, right. Shannon, one true Daiquiri for the rest of your days. What does it look like? 

Shannon Mustipher 

It’s a Jamaican rum base. So Rum Fire is the default and if for whatever reason I couldn’t get that I’m a big fan of Worthy Park select overproof. 

Paul Clarke 

Mm. 

Shannon Mustipher 

They have a different texture, but I could be happy with either one indefinitely. I again just built in a tin, shaken, served up, that would absolutely hold me down for as long as I was able to exist in that scenario.

Paul Clarke 

Right. Garret, you’re on your actual desert island. What is your final Daiquiri for the end of days look like?

Garret Richard

Yeah. It’s a it’s a hard choice. Is it one bottle or is it?

Paul Clarke

It’s, this is you, you have washed up on this island with whatever you have happened to pack along in your suitcase. If you made a blend, then that’s fair game. 

Garret Richard

Oh that’s easy, then because then you can just, you can just re, you know, retool the, the blend every now and then. 

Paul Clarke 

Well, no, no, no. You have the blend. You have something that you pre-mised.

Garret Richard

Yeah. That’s fair. I …

Joshua Ibañez

Can’t have it all unfortunately. 

Garret Richard

Yeah. I like, generally I think having sort of one clean and like mostly, two ounces of something very clean and then like a teaspoon of something that’s very funky. So I don’t know for this, let’s just say Santa Teresa Claro or Havana Club, you know, depending on what part of the world we’re in, and we’ll say a teaspoon of Rivers. So yeah, and then some, some nice sugar and and yeah, the lime can be fresh every day. 

Paul Clarke 

Right, Right. 

Garret Richard

Great. 

Paul Clarke 

Excellent. Wow. This. I have to say, this is been this has been one of the coolest episodes that we’ve done in, in four years of doing this. Garret, Shannon, Josh, thank you so much for taking all of your time to share all of this with us and for this big, deep dive in the Daiquiris and for all of your perspective. Have a great summer. And I’m looking forward to seeing each of you very soon. 

Joshua Ibañez

Thank you so much. Appreciate it, Paul. 

Shannon Mustipher 

Sounds good, Paul. Thanks for having us. 

Garret Richard

All right.

[music]

Paul Clarke 

Have we got recipes for Daiquiris and Daiquiri relatives online? You bet we have. Head to imbibe magazine dot com to check out the many ways we’ve looked at this classic cocktail and its relatives over the years. 

Be sure to check out Josh’s bar Rumba at rumbaonpike.com, Garret’s bar Sunken Harbor Club at sunkenharbor.club and keep up with Shannon online at shannonmustipher.com. We’ve got all those links for you in this episode notes. 

And that’s it for this episode. Be sure to subscribe to Radio Imbibe on your favorite podcast app to keep up with future episodes. We’ve got our full back catalog of episodes along with many, many recipes and articles for you on our website Imbibemagazine.com. Follow us on social media to keep up with our day to day. You can find us on Instagram, Pinterest, Threads, and Facebook. And if you’re not already a subscriber to the print and or digital issues of imbibe, then this is the best time in the world to change that. Just follow the link in this episode’s notes and we’ll be happy to help you out. 

I’m Paul Clarke. This is Radio Imbibe. Catch you next time.