Order a Moscow Mule in Brazil, and while the drink you’ll get will arrive in the expected copper cup, what you’ll find inside is not the typical effervescent cocktail. There, a puff of white foam rests over the mixture of vodka, lime juice and simple syrup—a cloud in place of the typical ginger beer, something between liquid and air. This rendition has become so ubiquitous across the country that it is rare for any bar to serve the cocktail in the classic, non-frothy way.
The man to credit for this trend is Marcelo Serrano, a soccer player-turned-bartender from São Paulo. After playing on elite teams like Guarani and Bragantino, he started working at bars in London before he returned to his hometown in 2009 to curate the cocktail menu at a speakeasy called My New York Bar. He wanted to introduce cocktails from his international experience, like the Moscow Mule, which was unfamiliar in Brazil at the time. However, he faced a challenge: sourcing the necessary elements. Copper mugs, for example, weren’t readily available, so Serrano had to substitute with small copper bowls. But some of the ingredients were harder to replace. “There was no quality ginger beer in the local market,” he says. The challenge called for some innovation.
At that time, Catalan chef Ferran Adrià’s molecular cuisine was on the rise, with foams and techniques like spherification being adopted by numerous modern restaurants around the world. Having come across Adrià’s early experiments in Europe, Serrano drew inspiration from the techniques and created his own version of foam with fresh ginger. Using an iSi siphon, he transformed ginger juice (combined with lemon and egg white) into an ethereal puff, delivering flavor without density or carbonation.
The recipe proved successful, but only gained widespread attention when Serrano developed the cocktail menu at the upscale restaurant Brasserie des Arts, in São Paulo’s trendy Jardins neighborhood. There, he began reproducing the recipe, now featuring the iconic copper mugs. “It was 2012, Instagram was gaining popularity, and everyone was snapping photos of the cocktail. In Brazil, all the drinks were served in regular cocktail glasses at that time,” he recalls. “Suddenly, my version of the Moscow Mule got featured in magazines and newspapers and took over people’s social media profiles. It became a sensation and somehow it changed my life.”
Serrano went on to win local bartending awards, which recognized him with titles like Rising Bartender and Professional of the Year. He now proudly sports a tattoo of the cocktail’s name across his right forearm. And in Brazil’s drinks scene, the impact was so significant that many bars started replicating Serrano’s Moscow Mule recipe, which eventually became the go-to way to serve it.
Bartender Marco De la Roche, creator of the local industry-focused platform Mixology News, reminisces about the craze. According to him, Brazil was experiencing a period when vodka, as a spirit, was at its peak—“We were in the era of fruitini cocktails,” he explains—and Serrano’s take on the Moscow Mule came at the perfect time to introduce drinkers to a new take on a vodka cocktail.
According to De la Roche, Serrano’s reinterpretation now holds more relevance than the original Moscow Mule recipe in Brazil, because it “aligns better with contemporary preferences for intricate flavors, varied textures and heightened aromatic intensity.”
The exceptional popularity of Serrano’s revamped Moscow Mule led him to partner with a local company to develop a convenient, ready-made foam in a spray can, allowing any home bartender to recreate it without the need for a siphon. Fast-forward almost 15 years, and his recipe remains the most consumed version of Moscow Mule throughout the country—and a popular drink in general—even though nowadays, ginger beer is much easier to find. Serrano, however, has no qualms about the classic mix of vodka, ginger beer and lime. “I still like the original recipe,” he laughs, “but my clients never let me prepare it.”
