Name: Daiquiri (Difford's recipe)
Total time: 4 min
Cuisine: Cocktail
Ingredients: 50 ml Light white rum; 15 ml Lime juice; 10 ml Sugar syrup (2:1); 8 drop Daiquiri bitters; 10 ml Chilled water

Daiquiri (Difford's recipe)
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Photographed in a Retro Coupe

Ingredients:
1 ²⁄₃ oz	Light white rum (charcoal-filtered 1-4 years old)
¹⁄₂ oz	Lime juice (freshly squeezed)
¹⁄₃ oz	Monin Pure Cane Syrup (65.0°brix, equivalent to 2:1 rich syrup)
8 drop	Difford's Daiquiri Bitters optional
¹⁄₃ oz	Chilled water omit if using wet ice

Read about cocktail measures and measuring

Prepare:

Select and pre-chill a COUPE GLASS.
Prepare garnish of lime zest twist and lime wedge.

How to make:

SHAKE all ingredients with ice.
FINE STRAIN into chilled glass.

Garnish:

Express lime zest twist over cocktail and discard.
Garnish with lime wedge on rim.

Strength & taste guide:

No alcohol

Medium

Boozy

Sweet

Medium

Dry/sour

More cocktails with similar strength and taste profile

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Daiquiri (Difford's recipe) lifestyle thumbnail

Review:

Crisp, light and refreshing. Delicately simple yet with perfectly balanced complexity of flavours.

For an even better Daiquiri: In place of sugar syrup, use two slightly heaped 5ml measuring spoons of powdered sugar. If you like your Daiquiris very slightly tart then knock the excess sugar off so the sugar lays flat on the spoon. The sweeter you like your Daiquiris, the more heaped your loaded spoons should be. (I prefer slightly raised rather than flat.) To ensure the sugar fully dissolves, stir all the ingredients in the base of the shaker prior to adding ice and shaking.

To fill a large coupe, you'll need to scale up this recipe:
75 ml (2½ oz) Light white rum
22.5 ml (¾ oz) Lime juice
15 ml (½ oz) Sugar syrup
12 drops Difford's Daiquiri Bitters
10 ml (⅓ oz) Chilled water (omit if wet ice)

View readers' comments

AKA: Daiquiri No. 1

Variant:

Daiquiri No.1 6:2:1 recipe
Daiquiri No.1 Embury's 8:2:1 recipe
Daiquiri No.1 countdown 3:2:1 recipe

History:

My own tried and tested rum-heavy 10 parts rum to 3 parts lime to 2 parts sugar formula. This is my go-to recipe when making a straight-up Daiquiri with a dry light white (charcoal-filtered) rum. When using a more full-bodied rum, I follow a 6:2:1 Daiquiri recipe, which is better suited to "golden" rums.

Being the original Daiquiri, it is appropriately called Daiquiri No. 1 and is also known in Cuba as a "Natural Daiquiri," referring to its being shaken rather than blended.

This is the first of four numbered daiquiris in the 1934 1st edition Bar La Florida Cocktails, menu book of the famous El Floridita Bar, Havana, Cuba.

Daiquiri Num. 1
2 Ounces Bacardí Rum.
1 Teaspoonful Sugar.
Juice of half a lemon.
Cracked ice.
Shake well and strain into cocktail glass.
Bar La Florida Cocktails, 1st Edition, 1934

See: Daiquiri cocktail history

More cocktails by Simon Difford

Nutrition:

One serving of Daiquiri (Difford's recipe) contains 139 calories

Alcohol content:

1.1 standard drinks
17.32% alc./vol. (17.32° proof)
14.8 grams of pure alcohol

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Difford’s Guide remains free-to-use thanks to the support of the brands in green above. Values stated for alcohol and calorie content, and number of drinks an ingredient makes should be considered approximate.

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Showing 10 of 23 comments for Daiquiri (Difford's recipe).
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Charles Greenfield

1st August at 15:40

Excellent recipe, but to make it perfect add 5ml Green Chartreuse

Guy Daniels

20th July at 12:30

My all-time favourite. We call this Tchaikovsky's Daiquiri, as when you apply your 20% scaling for 60ml of rum, you need 1812 lime to sugar…. The perfect overture! Incidentally we ran out of our usual rum and could only get a bottle of M&S Jamaican white - which was surprisingly good in this.

Kevin Haynes

19th July at 20:33

Made this ratio today, starting with 60ml of Koloa white rum. It really is a wonderful ratio for the daiquiri. I think I got a good dilution since it's rather warm here so the ice melted well during the vigorous shake, plus I did a quick simple syrup which was warm and helped melt the ice more.

I only see the Koloa coconut rum listed on this site, but they do have white, golden, spiced and dark rum options. Though, so far my favorite white rum is a Florida based one called Florapina. Not reviewed here, but it's inexpensive for those based in the USA that can find it and for the price point it is magnificent.

Aaron Ginn

19th July at 13:10

I prefer darker rums in my Daiquiri. My current recipe is a riff on the Smuggler's Cove Daiquiri #1:

1.5 oz Appleton Signature Rum
0.5 oz Hamilton 151 Overproof Rum
0.75 oz Fresh Lime Juice
0.5 oz 2:1 Demerara Syrup

I could drink this cocktail exclusively for the rest of my life and be perfectly happy.

Sean Anderson

8th July at 14:33

I've made this recipe dozens of times now, and agree it's possibly the best cocktail ever when perfect. But when I use ground sugar instead of Monin syrup it often doesn't come out perfect.

With ground sugar the sweetness tastes technically correct and the customers (my friends) are happy, but to me it lacks this zingy brightness on the tongue that it has when I use Monin syrup and a dash of water.

To put it another way: why does the recipe say to use ground sugar – then add chilled water? This seems contradictory.

Simon Difford

9th July at 17:05

I tend to add a little more water with powdered sugar. It sounds like your powdered sugar is not fully stirred to dissolve before shaking. Sugar syrup is much easier and more consistent!

Annechien

30th August 2024 at 20:20

8:3:2 with plantation 3 stars. I’m in heaven.

tom munger

19th July at 16:22

Plantation 3-Star is my go-to rum, too. My favorite ratio is 12:6:1, the sugar being replaced by agave syrup, which is Mexican, I know, but it surely works with limes in Margaritas, so it’s a natural, in my opinion. We like them (both Margs and Daqs) sour, so sweeten to taste, but 3-Star is great!

Matt

23rd July 2024 at 02:53

Wonderful balance, but a tough ratio to remember and then figure out how to convert into measurements (at least for those of us not using metric). Great proportions of citrus and sweetness - if you want to taste the rum use something bold, if not use a mild-mannered white rum.

AA Thethird

7th June 2024 at 04:29

The drink of drinks.

Steven Cook

4th January 2024 at 23:22

One of the greatest simple cocktails out there, and it's easy to vary with different rums, demerara syrup, bitters and other additions without spoiling it. The classic one can elevate a cheap rum or highlight an expensive one.

Ignacy Szczupal

28th May 2023 at 11:24

Replacing the white rum based on molasses with an overproof agricultural rum from Martinique/Guadeloupe/Reunion adds a whole new olfactory dimension and creates something between a daiquiri and a ti'punch, a daipunch or a tiquiri! Give it a try!