As our blog readers are well aware, life at Ar Bruadair is such a hardship. Dave G tells us all the time how hard our lives are and how he’s so glad he isn’t like us 🙂
So we decided that in honour of World Gin Day… we’d tell you about some of the hard work we do… like making homemade tonic to go with the lovely gin we are lucky enough to enjoy from our membership to the Craft Gin Club. I don’t know what spurred us to think about making tonic, I can’t say that it’s ever been on our minds before but something must have given us the idea. So off to the t’internet for a bit of research and I was lucky enough to come across so many fantastic website with recipes and thoughts that let me work out what we wanted to do
If I’m honest, I was VERY dubious at first reading through the ingredients, I mean lavender? C’mon! But I have to say, we did use it in the end and wow, this is a lovely tonic. It’s much stronger in flavour than the stuff you would buy in the shops, much more of a fever tree than a Schweppes, but it is lovely, VERY citrussy. Not a hint of that lavender in sight. Well actually there is a SOMETHING in that subtle aftertaste but we’re not quite sure what… I should video us trying to describe this, it would go viral.
I would say if you fancy making this, some of the ingredients might be a bit hard to come by. Our local Tesco was a bit of a letdown so I had to buy in bulk from Amazon but hey I guess that means I have plenty of ingredients should we want to make more.
So I guess really you guys want to know how to make it right?
Go on, go mad.
OK take all of these ingredients and combine them in a large sterilised container and leave it in the fridge for 4 or 5 days. Gev it a good shake every day.
- 670ml water
- 28g chopped cinchona bark
- 62g citric acid
- zest of 3 limes, 3 lemons and 1 orange
- 3 stalks lemongrass bashed and chopped
- 6 whole allspice berries, cracked
- 3 whole cardamom pods cracked
- 1 and a half tablespoon lavender flowers chopped
Then add this to a “simple syrup”
- You can make your own syrup by heating 600g of sugar in 350 ml of water until it is dissolved.
Make sure it’s all thoroughly mixed. And store in a sterilised container in the fridge.
To make the perfect G&T… add one tablespoon of your tonic mix to per 50ml of sparkling water to make your “tonic water” and add it to your gin of choice. Our favourite is Manx Dry Gin from The Fynoderee Distillery
We are Eli and Kate 