Mexican Cocktails YOU should make!

What's up guys, welcome back to The Educated Barfly. Today, I'm going to be delving into the cocktails of Mexico. Mexico doesn't strike me as a land of cocktail drinkers. Or rather, if you go to a typical bar restaurant in Mexico, you won't find that many people sipping margaritas. More often, you'll find people drinking mezcal, or beer, or scotch, or tequila, often with a little side of sangrita. But that's not to say that Mexico hasn't made major contribution to the world of cocktails. The margarita is quite possibly the most popular cocktail ever, definitely in the world, followed very closely by the Paloma. And just like many other places, Mexico stands as one of the cities on the cutting edge of modern cocktail culture. But before we delve into Mexico's contributions to the future of cocktail culture, I thought we should look into the past. Today, I thought it would be nice to explore some of the less obvious cocktails. Let's go beyond the margarita and peel back the layers to some less recognizable Mexican cocktails. The first cocktail that we're doing today is called the Vampiro. This is a cocktail that I didn't really find a lot of history on, but it's something that I've gotten requested over and over and over again. And when I looked at the specs, it looked so gosh darn interesting that I had to make it. So let's get into that. First thing we're going to do is grab our tin. And we're going to do one ounce of orange juice, freshly squeezed, one ounce of tomato juice, and try to get something that's not from concentrate and just tomato juice. One dash of hot sauce, pinch of salt, grind of pepper, half an ounce of lime juice, half an ounce of grenadine, two ounces of reposado tequila. Add a little ice to our glass and to our tin. Nice hard shake. Strain. And to garnish, we're going to do this guy just like that. Or maybe make it go down into the drink. All right, let's give it a sip. Wow, that's really good. You know, this is the first time that I've mixed this cocktail. I mean, I kind of had an idea what it would taste like, but I was a little bit wrong. I mean, you taste the tequila and a little bit of that like minerality, and you also taste the barrel notes. The grenadine is really prevalent. It's nice and vibrant. You know, I'm sure that that salt pinch is just really making it nice and vibrant. It's a little bit spicy from the pepper. There's a lot going on there. You taste the orange juice. It's got nice tartness from the lime juice, but it's pretty balanced. The sugars from the citrus and then also the grenadine nicely balance it out, and it has this kind of savory feel to it. I like it. It's good. Here it is, the Vampiro. So the next cocktail that we're doing is a Paloma. And I know exactly what you're going to say. The Paloma is not peeling back the layers of unrecognizable Mexican drinks. It's a recognizable drink. It was even your example from earlier. But the version of the Paloma that I'm doing today is by far my favorite version of the Paloma. It's superior to the original and seldom seen. So I think it qualifies. Little is known about the origins of the Paloma, which translates to dove in Spanish. Some say it was named after a popular folksong of the 1860s, and others believed it was created by a guy named Don Javier Delgado Corona at his bar, La Capilla, which means the chapel, in the 1950s. It is Mexico's answer to the Tom Collins, and it is oh so good. Rightly taking its place as one of the most famous cocktails probably ever. So let's get into making it. First thing we're going to do, grab our tin. Then we're going to do three quarters of an ounce of lime juice. Three quarters of an ounce of simple syrup. We're going to do one ounce of grapefruit juice. But you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull my peel off first. This is going to be hard to get a peel off. There. I want that peel. One ounce of grapefruit juice. An ounce and a half of blanco tequila. Just going to do one dash of grapefruit bitters. Give it an eight to ten second shake. And then I'm going to take some soda water here, and we're just going to pour it in to the bottom. About an ounce. Just get the effervescence going. Double strain our cocktail. Add in our ice. You want to make sure to add enough ice that it goes all the way to the bottom of the glass. We're just going to top it up with a tiny bit more soda. And for garnish, I'm just going to do a little grapefruit twist. We're going to make sure to get the oils on top of the cocktail like so. And then we're just going to cut this nicely. I think I'm just going to snake it into the glass. Let's give this a taste. So good. Obviously you get the grapefruit and you get the lime. The lime is balanced out by the simple syrup, so it's not too tart. It's just nice and refreshing. The character of the agave in the tequila really comes through. It's a little bit of that minerality. You really can taste that kind of fresh agave flavor. And you can really get a sense, however faint, that sort of roasted agave flavor that just really plays into the grapefruit. And the bitters just kind of rounds it all out. So here it is, a modern Paloma. The Carajillo is a drink which can be found all over Latin America and is indeed a staple. Most often done with liqueur 43. Some versions of this drink date back to Cuba during revolutionary times when soldiers would mix a little brandy and a little bit of this liqueur with their coffee to give themselves courage during battle. The version of this drink that I'm doing today is a little riff that I came up with to add a little je ne sais quoi and one of my absolute favorite spirits, Chiranda, which is basically rum from Michoacan. It has a denomination of origin on it. It has a very interesting story behind it and I think I'm going to do a deep dive on it on the Spirited Adventurers channel because it's amazing stuff and everybody should be drinking it and everybody should be supporting it because it might go away forever and I don't want that to happen. To the cocktail! So first things first, we're going to grab our tin here, an ounce and a half of our liqueur 43, which is a Spanish vanilla forward liqueur with other botanicals that are secret. And then we're going to do just half an ounce of this Chiranda. And just for those of you guys that want like a flavor reference, this stuff is a lot like rum agricole mixed with a Jamaican rum. So you get that minerality and that grassiness and that kind of bright greenness of like a rum agricole, but then it also has like some kind of funkiness to it and it has a little bit of tropical flavors kind of like a Jamaican rum. It's really pretty brilliant stuff. Okay, so then we're just going to do half an ounce of this guy. And then we're just going to do a double shot of espresso into our tin like so. Put a couple few ice cubes into our tin. Give this guy a shake. And a double strain. Let's give it a taste. So obviously you taste a lot of the espresso. A little bit bitter, a little bit sweet. You get the vanilla coming through the espresso. And then you get a little bit of the rum right on the back end. You get that tropical grassy greenness. This is how I want to drink my coffee in the morning. And there it is my friends, the Carajillo. The Contadito is a cocktail that is served in many different places in Jalisco, Mexico from bars to restaurants to roadside stands. It's a little bit like the Paloma, but not a lot of people outside of Mexico know about it. So we're going to do it. And it usually goes in this traditional clay mug, which is sometimes used as just like a disposable container for a takeaway drink. First thing we're going to do is an ounce and a half of orange juice, half an ounce of lime juice, three quarters of an ounce of grapefruit juice, two ounces of tequila. Okay, now I'm going to be doing this a little traditionally and just doing a pinch of salt. But if you want to do saline, you could do like a 10% or 20% saline solution, maybe 10% saline solution. Put it in there. All right, let's go grab our ice. Give this guy a nice shake. Take some grapefruit soda here, throw it into the bottom of our Contadito, and then strain our cocktail in like so. Add in some ice. Technically you're supposed to serve it with a lime wedge. I think I'm going to go with some dehydrated citrus. Just going to drop these guys in here like so. Make it look nice and pretty. All right, sip it. Yeah. I mean, it's not the most complex thing I've ever tasted, but it's really good. It's just grapefruit, orange, a little bit of lime. You get the squirt in there, right? So you're just going to open the grapefruit a little bit. You definitely taste the tequila in it, which is kind of a front and center flavor, but it's just a mixing in with all the other juices. It's good. It's refreshing. I want to have this on a hot day. I just want to sit on my porch and drink Contaditos. So there it is, guys. The Contadito. I wish I had some really deep thoughts about Mexican cocktails for you guys, but these are great cocktails. Go out and make them. And I don't know, next Cinco de Mayo, maybe try some of these and not just margaritas. See you guys on another time. The pro tip for today's video is use salt in your cocktails and not just shaken cocktails. You can use salt in stirred cocktails as well. Salt does the same thing for cocktails as it does for food. It enhances the flavor. And so if you want to add just a little bit of zhuzh to your cocktails, use some salt. You can use it as just like a pinch of salt into your drink, or you can use a saline solution to be a little more exacting about how much salt you put into your drink. But everyone should be doing this.