Cucumber Mint Agua Fresca

Agua fresca is a chilled non-alcoholic drink popular in Mexico and Central America, made by blending fruit, soaked grains or steeped blossoms with water and a little sweetener. The name translates as fresh water or cool water, and this is the cucumber and mint version. It is Latin American rather than African. The source notes that similar drinks are available across many African countries, which is true in the sense that blended fruit coolers are made everywhere hot, but agua fresca is a specific Mexican and Central American tradition with a Spanish name. It sits in Worldwide Recipes for that reason, with its URL unchanged. Africa has its own cold blended drinks that this is not: zobo and bissap from hibiscus across West Africa, kunun zaki from fermented millet in northern Nigeria, bouye from baobab in Senegal, and tigernut milk. Each has its own name and tradition. One practical point about this recipe: gin appears in its ingredient list, which the prose presents as an optional way to turn the drink into an aperitif. That makes it alcoholic as written rather than the non-alcoholic drink agua fresca normally is, and it should be left out for the classic version.