Looking for the best Dark Rum Mojito cocktail recipe?
Our quick & easy Dark Rum Mojito is fun and refreshing. It’s best served on a hot day in the summer on a patio, backyard barbecue or cottage dock.
The homemade refreshing summer drink features premium dark rum, fresh mint, brown sugar, lime, and sparkling soda water.
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Mojito History
Would you describe yourself as more of a traditional beer and wine drinker? Looking to get your feet wet in the homemade cocktail game?
The Mojito is a classic cocktail traditionally made with rum that originated in Cuba.
The traditional Cuban highball consists of 5 ingredients: white rum, cane sugar, lime juice, soda water and fresh mint.
The classic Caribbean cocktail offers a flavour profile featuring sweetness, citrus and herbaceousness. These flavours compliment the rum, making it one of the most popular refreshing summer drinks.
Havana is the birthplace of the Mojito, although its exact origins are up for debate. Cocktail historians often mention two potential origin stories for the drink.
Local South American Indians had remedies for various tropical illnesses, so a small boarding party went to Cuba and came back with ingredients for an effective medicine. The ingredients were aguardiente de caña (translated as “burning water”, a crude form of rum made from sugar cane) mixed with local tropical ingredients: lime, sugarcane juice, and mint. The drink helped prevent scurvy.
Another theory is that it was invented by Sir Francis Drake. The “El Draque” cocktail was prepared with brandy. While this drink was not called a mojito at the time, it was the original combination of these ingredients.
The mojito has routinely been presented as a favorite drink of celebrated author Ernest Hemingway. It was also later popularized to a global audience in an award-winning James Bond film.
Our Dark Rum Mojito is a rift on the classic Caribbean recipe. It replaces traditional white rum with more flavourful aged dark rum.
Travel To Cuba to Taste the World’s Best Mojito
There’s no better way to achieve Mojito Expert status then by traveling to the cocktails birthplace, the friendly island of Cuba.
Cuba is one of the most popular sun destinations for Canadians, which is why so many cocktail lovers from Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal enjoy the classic Caribbean drink so much. Once you’ve tasted a traditional mojito on a sun-soaked Cuban beach it leaves a lasting impression.
I sipped over 50 mojito cocktails during my first visit to Cuba, which was a circumnavigation cruise. The 10 day itinerary offered stops to popular Cuban destinations like Trinidad, Punta Frances, Holguin and Santiago de Cuba.
While on holiday you can easily order traditional mojito cocktails at popular bars in Havana and breezy rural beach resorts. In Havana, tourists flock to La Bodeguita Del Medio, a storied watering hole features walls decorated in framed celebrity photographs and mojitos.
If you’re looking for a truly authentic experience visit local Cuban restaurant, order a bowl of Ajiaco Cubano and wash it down with a refreshing minty mojito.
The bartender on my cruise made thousands of cocktails a day. I appreciated how he got creative with the classic white rum muddled recipe by substituting a variety of top shelf premium aged dark rums.
Best Bartender Tools & Cocktail Equipment
Before hosting a swanky Dark Rum Mojito soiree you’ll need to ensure you have the best bartender tools and cocktail equipment.
- Cocktail Kit: cocktail kits are the perfect gift for newbie mixology fans as they include basic bartender tools like a jigger, shaker and spoon.
- Cocktail Shaker: a bartender’s best friend. Purchase a premium cocktail shaker to muddle or shake up your favourite pink gin cocktails.
- Cocktail Glassware: make sure your bar is stocked with a selection of unique glassware to show off your favourite cocktail creations.
- Hawthorne Strainer: this unique strainer features tightly wound coils and perforated holes. It keeps ice and other large ingredients like lime wedges in your cocktail shaker rather than in the glass.
- Bar Spoons: slender and long bar spoons are a must-have when stirring drinks.
- Bottle Opener: easily open bottles of beer or cider with the flick of your wrist or purchase a corkscrew for fine wine.
- Pouring Spout: once you’ve opened a new bottle of gin insert these affordable pourers to make cocktail assembly a breeze.
- Cutting Board: purchase a petite cutting board for your bar to slice garnishes or citrus wedges like lime, orange, lemon or grapefruit.
- Ice Bucket: chill bottles of gin quickly in an ice bucket or keep by the bar when muddling gin mixers into cool creations.
- Ice Crusher: fans of the Mint Julep love an ice crusher.
- Ice Cube Kit: we suggest purchasing a selection of ice cube trays. Silicone styles are our favourite as they’re easy to clean and are available in various shapes and sizes.
- Jigger: use a jigger to accurately measure spirits, juices, syrups and shrubs.
- Juicer: invest in an electronic juicer or buy an affordable hand-held to easily juice fresh citrus like lemons and limes.
- Muddler: fans of the Mojito love a sturdy muddler to mix mint and lime. Muddler’s are handy for any cocktail featuring ingredients that need a pounding like fresh herbs or citrus wedges.
- Citrus Peeler & Zester: adorn your craft cocktails with a thick citrus peel or finer ribbons of lime or lemon zest.
- Rimmer: Bloody Mary and Caesar lovers should outfit their bar with a handy rimmer for salting and sugaring glassware.
Best Selling Rum
While mojitos are traditionally prepared with white rum we suggest using more flavourful dark or spiced rums as well.
Here are some of the world’s best selling rum brands, perfect for muddling into a refreshing Dark Rum Mojito:
- Havana Club: is Cuba’s most famous rum brand, originally created in 1934. If you’re visiting Havana on holiday we highly suggest taking the Havana Club tour to learn more about the history of rum production on the island and evolution of the mojito.
- Bacardi: the world’s best selling rum was founded in 1862 in Cuba. The company moved to Puerto Rico due to the revolution and today tourists can visit the Cathedral of Rum in San Juan for the ultimate mojito experience.
- Appleton Estates: is a sugar estate and distillery in Jamaica that has been handcrafting rums since 1749. They produce a wide variety of aged rums, as well as standard gold and white rums.
- Captain Morgan: is a brand of flavoured rums named after the 17th-century Welsh privateer of the Caribbean, Sir Henry Morgan.
- Mount Gay: is a rum produced in Barbados, and dates back to 1703, making it the world’s oldest comercial rum distillery.
- Goslings: is a Bermuda-based brand famous for blending and distributing quality rum. Goslings Rum is famously the main ingredient in the Dark & Stormy cocktail.
- The Kraken: is a Caribbean black spiced rum named after the mythical squid-like sea monster. The premium rum product is produced in Trinidad and Tobago.
- Diplomatico: is a premium rum produced in the Andes Mountains in Venezuela.
- Lamb’s: first launched in 1849 and today is made with rums produced in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.
- El Dorado: is a premium rum produced in Guyana.
Dark Rum Mojito Cocktail Ingredients
This homemade Dark Rum Mojito cocktail is made with fresh and healthy ingredients.
- Rum: we suggest using Bacardi Anejo, Mount Gay Eclipse or Diplomatico Dark Rum.
- Lime Juice: only use freshly squeezed lime juice. You can taste the difference when someone incorrectly muddles cocktails with store bought citrus juice.
- Sugar: we’ve replaced the traditional use of simple syrup or white sugar with brown sugar (cane sugar or palm sugar works nicely as well). The molasses in brown sugar gives this dark rum drink an additional layer of Caribbean flavour.
- Soda Water: we suggest using Fever Tree Club Soda. You could also use sparkling water from your own Soda Stream machine.
- Mint: you can purchase mint or harvest your own in an indoor edible garden.
Dark Rum Mojito Tips
This Dark Rum Mojito recipe is easy to make at home, ready to serve in under 10 minutes.
We love serving our Dark Rum Mojito on hot days in the summer at family barbecues, cottage happy hour and on a sun-soaked patio.
When preparing a traditional mojito, fresh lime juice is added to sugar (or to simple syrup) and mint leaves. The mixture is then gently mashed with a muddler. The mint leaves should only be bruised to release the essential oils and should not be shredded or sliced. Then rum is added and the mixture is briefly stirred to dissolve the sugar and to lift the mint leaves up from the bottom for better presentation. Finally, the drink is topped with ice and soda water. Mint leaves and lime wedges are used to garnish the glass.
Our Dark Rum Mojito recipe below is listed for one person. If you’re hosting a large gathering feel free to multiply the ingredients by the number of guests and muddle the drink in a punch bowl or jug rather than a cocktail shaker.
Serve the drink in a highball or collins glass with whole ice cubes or crushed ice.
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Best Aged Dark Rum Mojito Recipe
Aged Dark Rum Mojito
Equipment
- Shot Glass
- Cocktail Shaker
- Muddler
- Cocktail Glass
- Cocktail spoon
Ingredients
- 8 Fresh Mint Leaves
- 2 tsp Brown Sugar
- 1 oz Lime Juice
- 2 oz Dark Rum
- Splash Soda Water
Instructions
- In a cocktail shaker, muddle mint, sugar, and lime juice until the leaves are bruised. Use a muddler or the end of a wooden spoon.
- Add dark rum, and muddle to mix.
- Pour contents of the cocktail shaker into an ice filled glass. Top with soda. Serve garnished with fresh mint and lime wedge.
Nutrition
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