Cocktail of the Week – The G & T and a Guilty Pleasure by RC Dean
I have noticed a number of gin and tonic fans in the glibertariat, to the point where some of you actually make your own tonic from scratch (quelle artisanale, non?). I thought I was being hardcore by not using store-bought tonic and going with syrup-n-soda water tonic, but dayum, it honestly never crossed my mind to make it from scratch. I know some homebrew tonic recipes have been bandied about already; I would appreciate it if you could repost in the comments here.
Gin and Tonic
3 oz. gin (I’ve been using The Botanist, but its probably overkill and I could get away with something a little less expensive/refined).
6 oz. tonic water (my preference for store-bought is Fevertree Indian, but its been at least a year since I didn’t do the home-mixed version).
Splash of lime, lime garnish optional.
For store-bought tonic, pour everything over ice in a highball glass. The proportions aren’t critical here.
For home-mixed, grab a handy measuring glass, add gin, tonic syrup, lime, top off with soda water from your trusty siphon (or add seltzer or soda water from a can or bottle), pour over ice in a highball glass.
I like the Liber Spiced Tonic Syrup, but there’s a bunch of them out there I haven’t tried. Now that we are getting into the summer season (when RC likes him some G & T), I’ll probably order some other brands and do a little experimenting. The Liber is strong – for the recipe above I use around ¾ ounce, and I suspect ½ ounce would be fine. If you’ve never had anything but Schweppes, this will be almost unrecognizable – pronounced bitter flavor, some body (of all things in a mixer), and a lot of flavors going on.
I live in Arizona, where our summer drink season is long. I find that I lose my taste for Scotch in hot weather and even for rye or bourbon to some extent, and I drink mainly gin, rum, and tequila cocktails. We’ve already covered some of my favorite rum and tequila cocktails, but there is one more Casa Dean regular I have to put out there: the Jack and Coke. We use Mexican Coke made with cane sugar, which delivers a better drink. Mexican Coke is not hard to find in Arizona – I actually get mine at the local hardware store.
But seriously, RC (you’re undoubtedly thinking), Jack and Coke? Frankly, it’s a nostalgia thing. Mrs. Dean and I both remember these from our high school and college days, and nothing takes you back like the tastes and smells of your youth. Cocktailing is about enjoying a drink, about whatever works for you. Gearing up, adding some showmanship, all that is fine if you have fun with it; if you just like to keep it simple and cheap, well, de gustibus, my friends. You can call my Jack and Coke a guilty pleasure, but when it comes to cocktails in my book, there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure.
Calvados update: I snagged a bottle of the Berneroy XO. Not as refined as the Busnel Vielle Reserve VSOP, with more of a kind of pronounced winter apple flavor. For something like this, though, a little more rustic isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Spot the Not: Lyrics from National Anthems by Derpetologist
1. What the alien power has seized from us, we shall recapture with a sabre
2. So we have taken the drum of gunpowder as our rhythm and the sound of machine guns as our melody
3. He who is a true man is not frightened, but dies a martyr to the cause
4. Oh God, bless our bullets, bayonets, and grenades
5. The path to glory is built by the bodies of our foes
6. How can this fiery faith ever be extinguished by that battered, single-fanged monster you call “civilization”
7. Let us all fight, every one of us, for our black country
8. And if we have to die, what does it really matter?
9. Countless fighters died for our beloved people
10. Facing the enemy’s gunfire, march on!
11. There sat in former times, the armour-suited warriors, rested from conflict
12. Do not fear a glorious death, because to die for the motherland is to live
#3 is the not.
I have not yet gotten any of the Busnel from the other week. The place KSuelington told me about won’t ship spirits to my state, but will ship wine. I didn’t pay attention when I looked at their site.
I am drinking this beer, which was aged in apple brandy barrels. It is pretty good.
After all your porter talk, I picked up some of these. It is not a heavy porter, I like it.
That actually looks pretty good, just wrong time of year for me, too warm outside.
When it gets warm, it is margarita or g&t time.
I’m annoyed, after filling up my fridge with warm weather beers, the temperature is dropping into the 50’s this weekend.
I’ve seen Odell beers, probably when traveling because they don’t distribute on the East Coast. I don’t remember having any. If I stumble across that while traveling, I’ll give it a try.
Good to hear you like it!
Just tried me some Abbey ale from New Belgium. 7% ABV, smooth and mellow. Good for sipping by itself or with food.
Thanks, RC; I’ll have to see if I can find Fever Tree someplace…
They are available on Amazon with free shipping. However, they are 24 packs. If you have a World Market near you, I know they carry the Fever Tree products in my neck of the woods.
Alcohol by volume (ABV): 12.80%
I think your beer is not really beer, but something akin to what port is to wine.
“Not really beer”? Well, it is a bit high ABV, but it is not fortified. You can get beer with ABVs that high if you use the right stuff without fortification.
I was joking, but typically when I have drank something that high of ABV, it feels a little thick. Not to be confused with thicc, which is a good thing. But like a port.
Ahh, I see. I probably won’t have any other booze tonight. I can feel the 12.8% from this beer, and I have plans for a lot of house work tomorrow.
Where I come from, we call that “barleywine.”
I am drinking this beer, which was not aged much anywhere in particular. After a sweaty afternoon cutting wet grass on our corner lot, it’s very fine. Everyone needs to believe in something — I believe I’ll have another one as soon as I’m finished this one.
As for gin, I have yet to bust open the bottle of Corenwyn (“Corn Wine”) genever I secured last time I was in Zutphen in The Netherlands, but I’m looking forward to trying it straight first and then seeing whether it should be sullied by admixturation. Yes, I just made up that word. I think.
Hmmmmm . . .
Looks interesting. But look at these deplorables who make this. They have a raspberry ale and it’s actually the color of raspberry! This is obviously a serious threat to the children. Why doesn’t Canada think of the children!? Why doesn’t Zoolander do something!?
Purely out of scientific curiosity, you understand, I decided to crack the bottle of Corenwyn genever, and I’ve just finished sampling two fingers of the stuff.
Yeah, I’m not mixing this with tonic water. Ever.
But I am gonna bring back more of it next time I go to The Netherlands.
Sorry, I was too concerned about the Canadian children to notice. That stuff looks very interesting, as does most liquors I have never tried. Corn wine… now I cannot stop thinking about the corn beer that the Incas made… which is not so tasty I hear.
Actually, in Nederlands (Dutch) the word “coren” just means “grain”; when they actually mean what we call “corn” they usually use one or more words related to “maize.” It’s essentially a malt wine that’s flavoured with juniper.
After a sweaty afternoon cutting wet grass
Pics?
I suspect you’d find them less than inviting. Neighbours and young children have been known to run screaming.
I shall try the syrup. I do like a G&T as well. Thanks.
The not, I am guessing 6.
I just got home from work and getting ready to log back into my workstation because I just had an epiphany about a problem I was working on today. I hate getting those because most of the time they never come when you want them to. Ok, they NEVER come when you want them to. Instead they come at 3am in the morning and then I find myself at my puter, ugh.
But at least I’ve cracked a beer and a couple more of these, I’ll give up on work. Beer doesn’t solve everything but it solves some things. Bought some 22 oz cans of Sapporo and also a few 34 oz cans of Carlsberg. Drankin me troubles and epiphanies away… it could be a song…
That’s exotic for me, these cans, because it’s not Heineken or Stella.
I’m usually too tired at work to have those, so mine too come in around 3am while I’m trying to get to sleep.
Yeah, I think maybe it’s that you need to get into a relaxed state and then your brain clears of all the daily clutter and the one thing that you need most finally comes to you. It’s annoying though. More than a few times I’ve went to my desk at 3am and then I suddenly realize that I don’t have time to go back to sleep, but have to make coffee, shower, get dressed, and go visit a client on 3-4 hours sleep at best.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a nice cold Sapporo.
It has to be 6, right?
Jack and Coke was good enough for Lemmy.
I still like that. I rarely drink it, but it brings back fond memories.
8. To whiny.
Gin and Tonic is a solid. I fell off of the wagon last weekend but sadly I am back on it.
Derp, I dont see any real standouts there. They are all equally insane.
I fell off in 1997 after a few years of wagon, and then again, in 2002 after 6 months or so. It is good to stop for a bit. I should probably go on another hiatus myself.
I tend to overdo when I am doing anything. I was hitting it pretty hard there for a few years. Weird thing is I never found it hard to stop. I just quit…oh well. Time to find a new hobby, and I am happy. I am happy now. My yard is cut, my house clean and my garage smells like Minwax Pecan wood stain.
Ya, I am the same. My last good job, we had dry camps. A month or two no booze was no big deal for me, but some guys were losing it the first week, and then at about week four. One does tend to over do it coming out of prohibition in a dry camp though. It leads to some pretty drunken airplane trips.
I do like me some G&T but unfortunately the wicked hangover it always gives me ain’t worth it.
There are times it’s useful to be a European mutt. I’ve had all of one hangover in my life, and it’s not for lack of drinking.
What kind of mutt? I’m all northern England and northern Germany – I should be able to tolerate anything alcoholic.
Irish and Scottish (due to that, some British as well), German Swiss, and Eastern European (in what is now Slovakia). There are unconfirmed rumors that my distant relatives in Switzerland own a distillery.
I’m a European mutt too (mostly German and Welsh, with some English and Irish in there too), and I have had more than one hangover in my life.
I almost never get a hangover from gin or vodka. Whiskeys now, that’s a different story, which is why I don’t typically drink it.
Oh me too with the whisk(e)y. I can drink one or two but never make a whole evening of it.
Panty Remover. That’s what my best friend from High School called it. Gin is the Devil’s own juice.
I love gin and tonic, but the reason I don’t typically use tonic is that it’s full of high fructose corn syrup, gross. I just use carbonated water and put some stevia in to sweeten, add some lime and a couple olives. But I miss the quinine. Really would like to try making my own tonic.
I buy the cheap diet tonic. No HFCS as far as I know..
Saccharin to me, the taste is just nasty, worse than corn syrup and it sometimes gives me a headache, I won’t touch it. Too bad it seems to be difficult to find a tonic that is not sweetened with corn syrup.
Pretty sure the syrups use cane sugar. I think I’ve seen low/no sugar syrup, too.
The not is 8. It’s anachronistic.
I’m a bit embarrassed. I still haven’t had a Gin and Tonic. I rarely drink cocktails. If I drink the hard stuff, it’s almost always straight. Dark and Stormies and Irish coffees are about the only cocktails I drink when I do drink a cocktail.
I never liked them, and then I had one with a whole lime squeezed in it. I like them a bit more limy.
I sometimes go “quasi caipirinha” with them, and just crush a handful of lime chunks (you know the little segments they have in the bartender’s garnish-arsenal?) into them. where its like 1/3 pulp.
i’m not so picky about them tho. they’ve never struck me as a drink you consume for its subtle sipping qualities. its just a light, neurtal, refreshing summer drink that you only notice when its *bad*
OMG, gin is good. But to me, so is vodka. I can’t imagine drinking gin straight though. A little carbonated or seltzer water, some lime, and a couple of olives in a good gin, yummy.
Don’t forget about two other classic gin drinks:
Tom Collins
3 parts gin
2 parts lemon juice (or a mix of lemon/lime juice)
1 part simple syrup
Carbonated water
Shake the gin, juice, and syrup together, strain into a tall (or Collins) glass filled with ice. Top with carbonated water. Garnish with a slice of the citrus you used, and a cherry if you must.
Gimlet (if you must drink cheap gin, this makes it palatable)
The Chandler recipe:
“A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.” —The Long Goodbye
The modern recipe:
2 oz gin
.75 oz lime juice
.75 oz simple syrup
Mix the ingredients over ice, and stir until well chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass (or an old fashioned glass) over ice, a garnish with a lime wedge.
Now see what you’ve done? You’ve gone and made me want to buy a good bottle of gin tomorrow so that I can try this. I’ve been triggered! Me hardest hit!
Ok, I was going to do it anyway, but now I feel better having blamed someone else for my over indulgence in the good life.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever tried Tom Collins. May have at some time in the past, but I’m sure I’ve never made one.
I wouldn’t necessarily go with a good bottle of gin for these. Both of these drinks work best with average gin, as the high amount of citrus added to the gin will overpower any delicate botanicals in the gin. If you have a preference other then gin, you can use any clear liquor in place of the gin in the Collins, and each has a different name. All of them are great hot weather drinks.
Well, haven’t bought a bottle of gin in quite a while, so I’ll probably want a good one I haven’t tried. Tanqueray or Bombay are the cheapest stuff I would drink, but I’m going with something good. Thinking maybe The Botanist mentioned here if I can find it since that’s one I’ve not tried yet.
But see what you’re saying. Maybe try one of the Tom Collins and then go back to my typical method of not mixing it much except carbonated water and lime.
6 is the not
the sentence doesn’t read like it was written to meter
It certainly wasn’t written to *English* meter.
Jack and Coke ain’t fancy, but this business about looking down your nose at it is news to me. I have never heard anyone say a word against it or its drinkers.
I wonder if any of these anthems is for Mozambique, the badasses who put an AK-47 on their flag (and a book, to make the nerds feel included). Guatemala has some nifty 19th-century rifles on their flag.
“Guatemala has some nifty 19th-century rifles on their flag.”
I could see they were Remington breechloaders, not Springfield, but I had to look up the model. Good ‘ol rolling block ’71s.
Big fan of the James Bond G&T that I slightly modify
In a collins glass or stemless wine glass:
Heavy ice (I usually fill it to the top of the glass)
3 oz gin
1 lime, cut in half, squeezed (you can use one half as garnish)
6 oz tonic water
2 generous splashes of Angostura
Stir and enjoy
(I’ve been using The Botanist, but its probably overkill and I could get away with something a little less expensive/refined).
I discovered that the Not-Wife was using a very nice Anejo tequila to make really average margaritas. I cried, a little.
I can’t get over the hump of using good liquor in mixed drinks. Although, nothing will ever get me to buy Cuervo.
For tonic syrup, I’m a big fan of Jack Rudy’s, and also Tomr’s. The latter looks a bit strange, since it’s not clear like most tonics, but a light brown in color. Worth a shot, if G & Ts are your thing.
Botanist is a helluva gin, but I tend to use it more for cocktails than for simple highballs. Tanqueray or Sapphire will work for me in a gin and tonic.
A few of the gins that I’ve fallen in love with in the last year are Thomas Dakin (distilled in Manchester UK), Esme and Citadelle (both French), and Los Apostoles from Argentina. The last has, as its main botanicals (besides juniper, of course), eucalyptus, spearmint, and yerba mate.
Shpip’s latest creation:
2 1/2 oz Los Apostoles
1 1/2 oz pamplemousse liqueur (grapefruit)
1 oz fresh lime juice
Shake with ice, strain into a coupe. Conversely, pour over ice into a Collins glass and top with soda water.
It’s basically a Pamplona with gin, but damn, is it delicious.
I find that I lose my taste for Scotch in hot weather and even for rye or bourbon to some extent, and I drink mainly gin, rum, and tequila cocktails.
I was given a bottle of this by a vendor a few months ago. Very good stuff, with a spicy tang of caramel to it.
It’s almost gone, but the Not-Wife has developed a taste for whiskey as a result.
Never tried Botanist gin. I’ll have to see if the local liquor store has it. They have a lot of top shelf liquors, but don’t remember that one.
I bought a bottle of Green Hat Spring/Summer gin a couple years ago. It’s distilled in Alexandria and wanted to support a local small batch.
I think they dipped a wet, pissing sheepdog in the gin to flavor it. So awful. Not even good for a G & T.
Also, if you’re offered oak barrel aged gin, punch the person in the dick.
“I think they dipped a wet, pissing sheepdog in the gin to flavor it.”
LOL
My go-to’s for gin are Hendricks (natch), Hayman’s Old Tom and Citadel (reasonably-priced French gin). I’m not a fan of the heavy English potpourri botanicals.
Lemon twist with Hayman’s, olive for Hendriks. Citadel works with either.
I like Hendricks. Have not tried the other 2 you mentioned there. Plymouth is one of my most recent favorites.
“Plymouth”
Which I’m assuming is one of the ‘heavy potpurri botanicals’ you’re referring to, (:
Late coming back to the party ……
Plymouth is OK, but it’s one that’s 2nd or 3rd tier for me. I’ll buy it when they don’t have anything else I like.
I’ve been drinking Boodles like water. I usually like a more citrus forward gin, but Boodles is just really good for a damn reasonable price
::hat tip for g & t ::
My avatar is a picture of this Alberta rye whiskey, with some poured over rocks in an old-fashioned glass. It’s genuine 100% rye, too — not that corn shit with a bit of rye thrown in as a cheat.
Yum.
Whoa, I lie! Apparently there’s 8% “well-aged corn whisky added to flesh out the body.” Yikes. I haz a sad.
Oh well, still tastes awesome.
I’ve almost asked you several times what that is. I thought it might be slow gin because it’s so dark looking in the avatar pic.
Crikey, sloe gin, lol.
Sloe gin’s good stuff. Mebbe I can get some friends from Cambridge to bring some over this summer.
Jesse’s gin preference is St. George Terroir. It’s like drinking a hike in the Santa Cruz mountains.
Tonic is whole foods brand tonic water.
*Pours one out for sweating gin*
Drinking a hike is my favorite way to hike. I might need to check this gin out.
I sent a bottle to Kibby and Serious Man. It’s my favorite.
I think I can get that here. I’ll keep an eye out.