Tonic

We had our first attempt at making tonic water, based heavily on the recipe found here, by Jeffrey Morgenthaler.

Ingredients

• 4c water
• 2tbsp powdered lemongrass
• 1oz cinchona bark powder
• zest and juice of 1 lemon, 1 lime, and 1 orange
• 1/4c citric acid
• 1tsp mixed baking spices: cinnamon, clove, allspice, cardamom
• pinch of salt
• 1/2c sugar*

Okay, this is easy. 1) Throw everything in a pot. 2) Boil and simmer for 20 minutes. 3) Strain the mixture - we used a french press followed by several layers of cheesecloth. 4) Add 1/2 sugar per cup of remaining liquid.

Mix in a ratio of 1:3 with soda water and enjoy!

Thoughts: I like my tonic a bit more bitter than this, so next time I think we may use less sugar or more cinchona bark powder? I'm not sure. Claire thinks the flavor is, and I quote, "fantastic," so it may be just me. We also discovered that when we let this sit for a week in the fridge, we could decant and get rid of a bunch of the particulate matter we had missed earlier. In the future, we will probably experiment with different spices. Thoughts have included: Szechuan peppercorns, grains of paradise, black pepper, nutmeg. Finally, we tried to mix the tonic with water and carbonate it in our sodastream. Let me just make a suggestion if you try this: do not try this.

Disaster Index: 1/10