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Caipirinha

Cachaça muddled with lime and sugar over crushed ice — Brazil's national drink in its rawest form.

Difficulty
easy
Prep time
5 min
Strength
13.3% ABV
Glassware
Rocks glass
Base
rum
Serves
1

Ingredients

  • Whole lime, cut into wedges

    One whole lime, quartered, white pith trimmed from the tips

    15ml
  • Sugar

    Or 2 sugar cubes

    10ml
  • Cachaça
    60ml

Garnish: Lime wedge

Scale for a party

Method

  1. Cut the lime into wedges and place in a rocks glass with the sugar.
  2. Muddle firmly to release the juice and the oils from the peel.
  3. Fill the glass with crushed ice.
  4. Add the cachaça and stir well to combine.

Equipment

Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.

  • Muddler

    Household swap: The end of a rolling pin or the handle of a wooden spoon

  • Crushed ice tool

    Household swap: Ice bashed in a sealed bag with a rolling pin

Missing an ingredient?

Each swap below says what it changes and how to correct for it, so you can decide whether you are making this drink or a neighbouring one.

  • Instead of Cachaça

    Best substitute: White Rum

    This is the base in this drink.

    Quantity: Use the same amount

    Flavour impact: Produces a very similar drink, sometimes called a Caipirissima, with slightly less grassy funk than cachaça.

    What changes

    White Rum sits close enough to Cachaça that the drink stays recognisably itself.

    Character
    you lose grassy, funky, sugarcane-fresh and vegetal, and you gain clean, light, subtly sweet and sugarcane-forward. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.
    High confidenceA well-known and close substitute since both are sugarcane-based spirits.Close swapBecomes a variation

  • Instead of Sugar Cube

    Best substitute: Honey Syrup

    This is the sweet element in this drink.

    Flavour impact: Dissolves more easily than granulated sugar and adds a floral note, though it changes the texture slightly.

    What changes

    Expect more intensity and more texture. Still a good drink, and a slightly different one.

    Intensity ↑
    A more intensely flavoured ingredient will start to dominate the components around it.
    Texture ↑
    The swap adds body — the drink will coat the mouth more and feel rounder.
    Character
    Both are sweet, and you lose clean and neutral, and you gain floral, earthy and rich. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.

    To correct for it

    • Scale it back by a third and let the other ingredients hold their share.
    • Pour a little less of it, or shake a touch longer, so the extra weight doesn't smother the drink.
    Moderate confidenceA workable substitute for convenience.Shifts the drink

Make it better

  • Muddle firmly enough to release the peel's oils — a lot of the aroma comes from there, not just the juice.
  • Use a fresh, unwaxed lime, and trim the bitter white tips before muddling.
  • Cachaça varies enormously by brand; a smoother, lightly aged one makes a noticeably rounder drink.

Rescue this drink

Tastes bitter
The white pith was likely over-muddled — press firmly but avoid pulverizing it next time.
Sugar won't dissolve
Muddle a little longer before adding the ice, or use a syrup instead of granulated sugar.
Too strong
Add a splash of soda water to lengthen it — a common, casual variation.
The ice melts before you finishgeneral guidance
Crushed ice is meant to melt — that is where the dilution comes from — but it should be replaced, not endured. Top the glass up with fresh crushed ice after building and again halfway down. The drink stays cold and the last mouthful tastes like the first rather than like water.
Grainy, with sugar at the bottomgeneral guidance
Granulated sugar will not dissolve in cold spirit, however long you stir. Muddle it with the bitters and a splash of water first until the grains are gone, then build the drink — or use a syrup, which is the same thing pre-dissolved.
Too sweetgeneral guidance
Add a small amount of fresh citrus juice or a dash of bitters to bring the balance back — adjust gradually and taste as you go.
Too sourgeneral guidance
Add a little more sweetener (simple syrup or the cocktail's usual sweetening ingredient), a small amount at a time.
Served too warmgeneral guidance
Chill the glass, ice and every ingredient ahead of time — a warm pour is the fastest way to lose a cold drink's balance. For one serving, there's no real fix beyond rebuilding it properly chilled; for a batch, keep everything refrigerated until the moment of serving and add ice last.
No muddlergeneral guidance
The end of a rolling pin or the handle of a wooden spoon

Make ahead & storage

Make to order

Make this one to order — it is built on crushed ice, which cannot be prepared ahead. You can still measure and group the ingredients in advance, which is most of the work.

What it tastes like

The taste, and what drives it

off-dry, very sharp, light — a sour-structured drink served over crushed ice.

Off-dry

Dry → Sweet

Sweetened enough to take the edge off without reading as a sweet drink.

What drives it: Sugar — carries the most sugar into the glass.

Very sharp

Soft → Sharp

Bracingly sour — the first sip is meant to wake you up.

What drives it: Whole lime, cut into wedges — supplies the acidity.

Faintly bitter

Gentle → Bitter

A bitter edge you would only notice if you looked for it.

What drives it: Whole lime, cut into wedges — provides the bitterness.

Light

Light → Rich

Light-bodied. It refreshes rather than satisfies, which is usually the intention.

What drives it: Cachaça — adds most of the weight.

Very bold

Delicate → Bold

Very bold — concentrated, and served small for that reason.

What drives it: Cachaça — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.

What you smell first

  • Citrus peelLeads

    From Whole lime, cut into wedges, Lime wedge

  • Fresh herbLeads

    From Cachaça

  • Caramel and molassesLeads

    From Cachaça

Every aroma here comes from the liquid itself; nothing is layered on top.

How it was worked out

Each reading comes from the recipe's own recorded taste scores combined with what each ingredient contributes, weighted by how much of it is in the glass. Almost everything in this drink has detailed ingredient data behind it.

How balance actually works →

If it isn't right

What goes wrong with this drink, and why

Only the faults this particular recipe is actually prone to — each with the likely cause, the adjustment, and what the adjustment costs you.

  • It's too sweet

    Likely cause
    Sugar is carrying the sugar here, and it is the easiest thing in the drink to over-pour — syrup clings to a jigger and a "splash" is rarely the same twice.
    What to change
    Cut sugar by about a third and rebuild. If it is already made, a squeeze of citrus is faster than starting again.
    What that does
    The drink will read sharper as well as less sweet, because the acid stops being balanced. That is usually the intention, but it is a bigger change than it sounds.

  • It's too sour

    Likely cause
    Whole lime, cut into wedges varies more than any other ingredient in the drink. Limes differ by weeks of ripeness, and a sharp one can be half again as acidic as a mild one at the same measure.
    What to change
    Add sweetener a few millilitres at a time rather than diluting — you are correcting a ratio, not a concentration.
    What that does
    Sourness recedes and the drink gains a little weight. Overshoot and you will be reading the too-sweet entry above instead.

  • It's too strong

    Likely cause
    Cachaça dominates by design here — this is a drink built to be sipped, and it is under-diluted more often than it is over-poured.
    What to change
    Muddling for longer, or add a measured 5–10ml of water. Both are the same correction; one is just more honest about it.
    What that does
    Alcohol heat drops and the aromatics open up — a slightly diluted spirit-forward drink usually smells better, not worse.

  • It doesn't smell of anything

    Likely cause
    This drink's aroma comes from citrus peel and fresh herb, carried in the liquid. Serving it too cold suppresses that: volatile compounds do not leave a very cold drink.
    What to change
    Let it sit for a minute before drinking, and use a glass that narrows towards the rim to concentrate what does escape.
    What that does
    More of the aroma escapes and the drink reads as more intense. The cost is temperature: a drink left to warm also dilutes faster, so this is a trade against how long it stays right.

  • It tastes one-dimensional

    Likely cause
    With 3 components there is nowhere for complexity to hide — a sour-structured drink is exposed by design, so a dull one is usually a dull ingredient rather than a missing step.
    What to change
    Change the quality of what is there before adding anything new: fresh citrus rather than bottled, a better base bottle, a dash of bitters. Bitters add layers at a scale nothing else matches.
    What that does
    More going on at the same strength and sweetness. Adding a whole extra ingredient instead usually produces a muddier drink rather than a deeper one.

Taste profile

Sweetness
2/5
Sourness
4/5
Bitterness
1/5
Strength
4/5
Fruitiness
2/5
Freshness
3/5
Creaminess
0/5
Smokiness
0/5

Nutrition & alcohol

Estimate onlyBased on a standard 60ml pour; sugar quantity varies by taste.
Calories
170 kcal
Sugar
13 g
Carbohydrates
15 g
Alcohol units (UK)
2.4
US standard drinks
1.35
ABV
13.3%
Serving size
180 ml
Show calculation assumptions

Source: Calculated from standard measures

Calorie breakdown: ~132 kcal from alcohol, ~38 kcal from sugar and mixers.

Likely range: 128–213 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.

Assumes cachaça at 40% ABV and roughly 2 teaspoons of sugar.

These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.

Variations

  • Caipiroska

    Replace the cachaça with vodka for a cleaner, less funky version.

  • Caipirissima

    Replace the cachaça with white rum.

What kind of drink this is

The structure behind the recipe

A muddled build: a sour-structured rum-based drink, served over crushed ice — clean in the mouth.

Sour-structured

Something sour and something sweet held in balance over a base — the structure behind the whole sour family and everything descended from it.

  • Base

    Cachaça

    Spirit in the largest measure — read as the base.

  • Sour element

    Whole lime, cut into wedges

    Whole fruit with high recorded acidity (4/5), and nothing sharper is poured short — muddled, it is the sour element.

  • Sweet element

    Sugar

    Recorded sweetness of 5/5 — sugar in another form.

Drinks built this way are collected as the Smash family.

3 components' roles areworked out from the ingredient's category and recorded taste attributes rather than set by hand — the reasoning is shown above so you can disagree with it.

Technique

muddled

Pressure ruptures cell walls in fruit or herbs, releasing juice and volatile oils directly into the drink.

Fresh, green, immediate aroma that no syrup or liqueur reproduces, because it has not been heated or preserved.

What it ruins: Herbs, if you keep going. Mint bruised gently gives oil; mint shredded gives chlorophyll, which is bitter and grassy. This is the technique most often overdone.

Everything about muddling →How the technique works →

Dilution

During mixing, then strained

Water from ice typically makes up around 20% of the finished drink for a muddled build (commonly 15–25%). Dilution is an ingredient here, not a side effect.

Why dilution is an ingredient →

Served

Over crushed ice

Rocks glass · 180ml

Crushed ice chills and dilutes faster than cubes and keeps doing both while you drink, which is exactly what a drink built on strong flavours wants.

Texture and aroma

Clean

Nothing here thickens or aerates the drink — it is as light in the mouth as the liquid itself.

No dedicated aromatic component — what you smell is the spirit itself, which is a deliberate choice in a drink this spare.

Where to go from here

Each of these is here because of something specific about this drink, not as a standard set of links.

Where it comes from

Origin and family

Origin of the Caipirinha

Brazil's national cocktail, built around cachaça; documented use dates to the early 20th century.

Family

Smash

Spirit · muddled fruit or herb · sweetener · optional citrus — served over crushed ice.

On drinks history

Cocktail origin stories are frequently repeated and rarely evidenced. Our history section separates what is documented from what is folklore rather than picking whichever version reads best.

History and culture →

Try this next

Related tools

Scale this for a party

Work out bottles, mixers, ice and total alcohol units for any number of guests.

Recipe confidence

A simple, well-documented and consistently made classic.

High confidence