Recipe: Tonic Water

As promised, here's the riveting conclusion to Making the Perfect Gin and Tonic...

Now that we've made wonderfully bubbly carbonated gin, it's time we make some tonic. Tonic water, originally developed to protect British troops from malaria while conquering strange and foreign lands, tasted awful in it's original formulation. The inclusion of quinine (from the bark of the South American cinchoa tree) made the beverage very bitter, but staved off malaria and allowed for the otherwise impossible colonization of Africa. Quickly the British colonialists realized that a dram full of booze helps the medicine go down and thus the famous G&T was born.

Modern tonic water bears little resemblance to the tonic water of the past, the quinine is still there but much reduced (and therefore less bitter), the sugar content is through the roof (~35g (!) of high fructose - about the same as any other soft drink on the market), and various flavors, preservatives, and citric acid (for a bit of tart). There are a few designer tonics out there now that use real sugar and less of it, but they're expensive, so lets make our own shall we?

Tonic's flavor breaks down to just two or three flavors - bitter (quinine), sweet (sugar), and sour (citric acid). All we need to do is replicate those three within proper balance in some carbonated water, and really we can leave the sour out since you typically add fresh lemon or lime to the cocktail anyway . Originally I was going to go through the effort of getting cinchoa but that seemed like a lot of effort just to get a bitter flavor, and malaria isn't much of an issue anymore here in the pacific northwest. So, I take some liberties here that purists might scoff at, but I found the results to be deliciously accurate to the original.

The Ingredients

Carbonated Water - I rolled my own here but you could just pick up a bottle of C02 infused H20 (aka club soda) if you don't have the means to carbonate in the comfort of your own home.

Quinine - OK, so I didn't use quinine, I really don't think that it's magically unique, after all, it was added for it's medicinal properties and not it's flavor profile. I rummaged through the cabinet of mysterious vitamins and herbs and came across some liquid guarana extract I had kicking around - it's bitter and from South America - close enough right? I even get a little caffeine out of the deal! Look for anything bitter that you hate to taste - experiment - use that old bottle of echinacea you got from your hippie friend for that cold that wouldn't go away.

Sweetener - This was actually my biggest motivation for making my own tonic water, I hate high fructose corn syrup and commercial tonic water is full of it. I used agave nectar, but you could use just about any sweetener here: sugar of any type, stevia extract, splenda, xylitol, the choice is yours. I would however recommend something that dissolves easily, powder/texture is the enemy of carbonation, as explained below.

Putting It All Together

Putting this all together is actually embarrassingly easy:

1. Add bitter stuff and sweet stuff slowly until it tastes like well balanced tonic - as sweet and bitter as you like.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: if the sweet or bitter ingredients in your drink are a powder you may witness the 'diet coke and mentos effect', which will ruin your tonic and create a startling mess of your kitchen. If using sugar, try adding it very slowly to make sure the carbonated water doesn't erupt, or better yet just make simple syrup. I specifically used liquid bitter and sweet ingredients to avoid this problem. Agave nectar is especially adept at dissolving properly in cold liquids.)

2. Starting to taste good? Make a mini gin and tonic to see how the flavors balance out.

3. Add a bit of lemon (if you're a Brit) or lime (if you're a Yank) to the tonic if you prefer to have everything premade instead of adding it fresh to each cocktail. I highly recommend straining out any citrus pulp before adding juice to the tonic for the reasons listed above.

You're done!

Add carbonated (or not) gin to tonic water at a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio with one good solid ice cube and enjoy!

There are endless variations on this. I added a full quartered lime and a handfull of halfed kumquats to the mix and let it sit in the sun for a few hours. The results when mixed with gin were sublimly sweet and bafflingly creamsicle.

Comments

[Markita]

tim, its markita alycias bff.... she told me about your blog so i thought id check it out! i noticed that you have not blogged in quite sometime... why? okay none of my business. any how, for some reason i feel that this gin and tonic creation is far too complicated for me. maybe not if it was hands on learning, i find that i can learn far more with that method... okay maybe thats asking too much. i should be visiting alycia soon, so maybe then .. ? have a fabulous day!
peace,
Markita