Home Made Tonic Water

[SimonMatthee]

Hi All,

There has been a lot of talk on this forum and over the internet about making one's own tonic water. And as a G&T enthusiast (when I've run out of beer of course), I set upon the challenge of making tonic water!

Turns out is is really easy, just a standard syrup, the hard part is tracking down the Cinchona Bark Powder (which is where the Quinine comes from). It is all but impossible to buy on shore, and there are many reports of it being seized by customs when ordered from the US. I took a punt and ordered it from here, and it arrived in ten days. The rest is history!

The result was delicious, a great base to start from and experiment with flavours. I like a kick in mine so will go harder on the lemon next time.

Full details and recipe here.



Cheers,
Simon

 

[Phoney]

How does it compare to schweppes and other commercial tonics Simon?

 

[SimonMatthee]

How does it compare to schweppes and other commercial tonics Simon?

Very different, you can see the colour has a brown hue, but the flavour was very smooth, the quinine not so in your face. One of the best G&T's I've ever had, but I am biased!

 

[Airgead]

Looks good. i just looked at you site and discovered that baking app that you put together. Pretty sweet. is it still under development? I'd love to see a few extra features (like being able to delete a recipe and a customisable ingredient list). I would raise a feature request in the forums but they appear to be filled with spam...

 

[Dave70]

Nice one mate. Mum loves a G & T so I'll make a batch up for her birthday.

I've ordered a few borderline herbs and seeds over the net that seemed to have slipped through the keepers gloves.

I guess customs have their hands full nowadays looking for steroids and meth precursor's to bother with a sachet of powdered bark.

 

[SimonMatthee]

Looks good. i just looked at you site and discovered that baking app that you put together. Pretty sweet. is it still under development? I'd love to see a few extra features (like being able to delete a recipe and a customisable ingredient list). I would raise a feature request in the forums but they appear to be filled with spam...

Thanks mate! It is still under development in a sense of I've run out of money to keep putting in to it! I love the app, but it is incredible how much has to be put in ($$$) to make it market ready. That is why is is still free.

For your feature requests, the customisable ingredient list is a hard one, I totally get it, but from an architecture point of view, each ingredient has specific densities behind it (so you can convert flour from grams, to cups, to mls, etc.), so I'm yet to figure out a work around for that.

To delete a recipe, just swipe from left to right, but the recipes that come with it cannot be deleted, only ones you add yourself.

On another note, I've recently found the baking app very useful for curing meat (prosciutto, salami, etc.) as it works on a very similar ratio system to baking.

Will let you know when the next update comes

 

[SimonMatthee]

Thanks Dave,

The package was fully labelled, all above board, I figure, customs had their chance!

S

 

[markymoo]

just to let people know, I am not sure if there is a direct correlation, however I purchased a pound of cinchona bark on the above mentioned website (herbaladvantage) with my credit card, and two weeks later the bank calls me about fraudulent transactions at Walmart in the USA.

Again, cant prove it was actually them, however this is the only "new" vendor I have used my credit card with in quite a while.

 

[Dunkelbrau]

just to let people know, I am not sure if there is a direct correlation, however I purchased a pound of cinchona bark on the above mentioned website (herbaladvantage) with my credit card, and two weeks later the bank calls me about fraudulent transactions at Walmart in the USA.

Again, cant prove it was actually them, however this is the only "new" vendor I have used my credit card with in quite a while.

Nah, probably nothing related, I had a run of 3 new cards in six months! For the second new one I didn't use It at all, then bam! Commbank called saying someone was using it on the play station to try buy games haha

Told her everything from the previous months and she said "people spend days just trying different numbers and combinations and get lucky".. Then I noticed my new card didnt have a usual expiry date, probably to try and put them off. No issue ever since and have used it on the sites I was initially suspicious of.

Chances are its a fluke!