Gin & Tonic Nerds

It might seem like we are somewhat alcoholic because we have a big passion for different types of alcohol. And it might be the truth, but with some modifications. We rather want one good beer or one good G&T than a bunch of mediocre beers and drinks.
But speaking of alcohol we are also experimenting with brewing our own beers. So far we have brewed 4 different IPA's which have all been nice.

We have brewed an IIPA, a low alcohol IPA, a coffee IPA and then a more "regular" IPA. But today we are brewing something new! Right now a big batch of porter is boiling in the pot. Its a knock off of the Danish beer called Limfjordsporter which is one of the greatest porters on the market. The Ratebeer rating speaks for it self.
After today is just waiting time ahead. In two weeks we will bottle the beer and put it on kegs. And after that is more waiting. Stouts and porters really love some long ageing, we are therefore planning on storing a few bottles for a year or more to see how the beer develops over time. But after 6 week of being bottled we can taste the outcome which is always an exciting process.

When we are getting more experienced with the whole process we are planning on developing our own recipes. We already have a bunch of ideas that we want to come to live.

As I'm writing this while we are still brewing the beer I don't have any photos of the final product. But I did take a photo of this fantastic colored mash. Look how dark it is!

I went through some of my old pictures and came across pictures of earlier G&T creations.  I will in advance apologies for the bad photo quality. You can't win every time ;)

One of them is this grapefruit G&T. Its mixed with freshly squeezed grapefruit juice. The bitternes of the grapefruit really compliments the gin and the tonic.

Last year we went on an extended weekend trip to London. First of all to visit some friends and secondly because we were attending a craft beer festival. We had an amazing time and really enjoyed both being with our friends and tasting a lot of great beer. One of the days we went to a food market. And inside the market area down in a corner a gin bar unfolded and we knew right away that we had to go taste some gin and of course some G&T's.
The gin bar offered a lot of different gin cocktails which we tried some of. Unfortunately I don't recall the gins they used for the cocktails we had. But we had a cocktail with cucumber and elderflower and one with Aperol and grapefruit juice - and of course gin!

The cucumber/elderflower cocktail was refreshing and had a Hendricks G&T feeling due to the cucumber. The grapefruit/Aperol wasn't nearly as refreshing and was almost a bit to heavy for the nice late summer weather. Maybe a little less Aperol and more grapefruit juice would have done the trick.
The gin bar offered hundreds of different gins and I believe we tried 4-6 different gins. If you come across a gin bar in London, I will definitely recommend that you give it a go, because them brits to love their gin!

Unfortunately I haven't been experimenting that much with homemade tonics since the first batch, but oh boy is it worth giving some more testing!
For my birthday I was so lucky to get a SodaStreamer so now I always have bubbles by my hand. And that is needed when you are making your own tonic. Of course you can just buy carbonated water but it takes to the next level when you also make the bubbles yourself.
To make the tonic you need to boil a syrup which you afterwards mix with carbonated water and then with gin. The big plus about making your own tonic is that you can add the flavours you prefer and you can turn the amount of quinine up and down to your liking.
I boiled a huge batch and I will recommend that you scale the portion down if you want to do some experimenting with the flavours.


Heres my recipe:

• 1 liter of water
• 500 grams of sugar
• zest and juice of 1 orange
• zest and juice of 1 grapefruit
• zest and juice of 1 lime
• 1 table spoon of crushed cinchona bark
• 2 stalks lemongrass, chopped
• 4 whole allspice
• 1 star anise
• 1 green cardamom capsule
• 1 clove
• 2,5 tea spoons of citric acid

Combine all the ingredients in a pot and bring it to a boil. Once the mixture starts to boil, reduce the heat and let it simmer for about 20 min without cover.
Remove the mixture from the heat and strain out all solids with a fine strainer. Afterwards let the mixture strain through a coffee filter to get a somewhat clear liquid. Let the mixture cool down and then you have syrup that is ready to be mixed with carbonated water.

This is the amounts I used for a gin and tonic:

• 2 cl tonic syrup
• 8 cl carbonated water
• 6 cl gin
• Lots of ice

Even though we released a new blogpost earlier today it has been lying as a draft for very long. Because a lot have happened over the last 3 months.
But that doesn't mean that the gin supply has shrunken or new gins haven't been introduce to the our stock.
And besides gin a lot of rum has also taken its place in our booze cabinet. I think we are counting more than 35 different bottles of fine alcohol. But gin is still the our biggest passion.

The newest gin to our collection is a rye based Koskue Gin that has been oak barrel aged which Simon brought home with him after one of his trips to Helsinki. Its a very unique gin with a very distinct rye note, it almost taste grainy. When we tried the gin we wanted the flavours to really stand out. We therefore mixed it with the pretty mild Indi Tonic and that really made the gin come alive.

Here is what we did:

• 6cl Rye Koskue Gin
• 12cl Indi Tonic
• 1 slice of lime
• Lots of ice

It was a really nice and interesting G&T where the rye gin had a chance to stand out.

We are getting closer to winter and the first overnight frost has arrived. And even though it seems like summer is already a long time ago we had some very nice summer days with friends and G&T's. At Copenhagen Street Food we had some huge and very tasty Hendricks G&T's with lots of red pepper corns. When summer arrives again we will definitely go grab some more of those tasty f..ckers. Meanwhile we can enjoy the look of it and think back at wonderful summer nights .

So... The plan has been to post here regularly, but over the last couple of weeks we've been preparing and planning our move. Therefore we haven't had time to do a lot of tasting or blogging.


We'll be moving soon, and hopefully get our gin unpacked quickly! Meanwhile here's a small group photo before we packed the gin down.

We also had a small taste of our newest addition, the Monkey 47 which we mixed with Indi&Co tonic. This proved to be a lovely pairing, as the tonic is very smooth and balanced, and therefore didn't overshadow the gin.

We also did  a very refreshing G&T with lime zest and fresh mint that turned out to be surprisingly good!

Recipe:
1 part gin (we used Bulldog)
2 part tonic (we used Pellegrino)
Lime zest
Fresh mint leaves
Plenty of ice