You Can Bruise Leaves?

Low key evening called for an easy to make cocktail with ingredients on hand.  Did some random browsing on imbibemagazine.com (gratuitous plug) and found the Old Maid, a gin-based drink with cucumber that is similar to one of my favorite home-made drinks, the Ocean Side.

2 oz. gin
1 oz. fresh lime juice
3/4 oz. simple syrup (1:1)
3 cucumber wheels (cut 1/4-inch thick)
6-7 mint leaves
http://imbibemagazine.com/old-maid/

Nice and easy, chop chop!  When reading the directions, however, I noticed it warned against “bruising the mint” when muddling — whaaaa?  How is that possible?  I once saw a bartender sort of punch the mint leaf and was mystified — is that some sort of age-old bar trick to attract good luck?  Obviously, I could have googled it, but I prefer to live dangerously/stupid.  I figured it probably meant to lightly muddle the leaves:

20150604_171333

Pretty ain’t it?  Love muddling, makes me feel like a man.  Anyway, the drink itself was pretty good — the cucumber came on really strong up front, but I got used to it.  Nothing particularly memorable, a 3 or 3.5, but a nice treat after work or before bed.  Oh yeah, I looked up how to bruise a leaf — don’t muddle it hard.  Its clear, I’m a natural 🙂

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