Muddling

What muddling does

Muddling extracts aroma by force. Fruit breaks and gives up its juice and the oil in its skin. Herbs carry their oil in fragile sacs on the leaf, which burst under light pressure and scent the whole glass at once. Sugar crystals work like fine sandpaper, abrading peel and leaf as they are pressed.

The verb is press, not grind. Shredded herbs release chlorophyll and tannin along with their oil, which reads green and bitter; a citrus wedge worked too long gives up the bitterness of its white pith. The aim is to take the aroma and then stop.

When to muddle

• Drinks built on fresh herbs, such as the Mojito or the Mint Julep.
• Drinks that take their juice from whole fruit or skin-on wedges, such as the Caipirinha.
• Drinks that begin with a sugar cube and bitters, such as the Old Fashioned, where the cube, the bitters and a little water are worked into a paste before any spirit or ice goes in.

When the recipe already calls for juice or syrup, there is nothing to muddle: that is the job of shaking or building.

Tools

A muddler — wood or nylon, flat-faced for fruit, unvarnished so nothing flakes into the drink; a thick-walled serving glass or a shaker tin; and a fine-mesh strainer for the debris.

Steps

1. Put the fruit, sugar or herbs in the base with only a little syrup or spirit.
2. For fruit and citrus wedges, press straight down with a small twist, four to six times, until the juice runs.
3. For herbs, press lightly two or three times, or simply push the leaves into the syrup and turn them once.
4. Add the spirit, then the ice.
5. Shake or mix in the glass as the recipe asks, adding anything carbonated last.
6. Double-strain when the drink should be clean; leave herbs in only as garnish.

Common mistakes

• Pulping the mint. The colour darkens, the taste turns bitter, and the aroma you wanted is gone.
• Pressing hard in a thin glass. It can break.
• Working a citrus wedge too long. Pith bitterness overtakes the juice.
• Adding the sugar afterwards. Without that friction the extraction is incomplete.
• Leaving all the debris in the glass. It keeps extracting, and the drink turns bitter halfway down.

Examples in the catalogue

The Mojito is the light-handed case: the mint only needs waking, not destroying. The Caipirinha is the opposite — its acid and perfume come entirely from citrus wedges pressed open with sugar. The Mint Julep leaves the herb, the whisky and crushed ice to work on each other in the glass, while the Old Fashioned shows that muddling can mean nothing more than a single sugar cube.