Homemade tonic expiration date

I hadn't really experimented with my homemade tonic water (or consumed much of it either) since I made it on May 31. Today I was thinking about tonic again and decided to have a look at the bottle in the refrigerator. Bad news- it had mold growing on top. (It was in a whiskey bottle with metal screw cap that I repurposed to hold the tonic water syrup.)

So for all of you wondering how long your homemade tonic syrup will last in the (my) refrigerator, the answer is less than a month.

I made a drink

...with my limoncello.

But it wasn't very good. The picture is better than the taste.

Homemade limoncello

I have a lemon tree in my front yard, so I decided to put it to good use (okay it gets used for juice and garnish all the time) and make limoncello. I used the recipe that was recently printed in the Wall Street Journal:

If you'd like to try your hand at the homemade sort, it's easy enough to do. Peel fine shavings from the skins of a dozen lemons; avoid cutting into the bitter white pith, so that the peelings are pure yellow. Pile the peel into a glass container, and pour in a bottle of vodka. Let it steep for about a week, or until the peels have lost all their color, before straining out the lemon peels. Dissolve two cups of sugar in three cups of water on a medium stove, and let it cool. Add the sugar syrup to the lemon-infused vodka, to taste. Bottle your limoncello, and keep it chilled.

You can make a similar liqueur using oranges instead of lemons -- or just about any citrus at all. But whether you're pouring your own house limoncello or one of the burgeoning number of commercial brands, just remember that it is best after a meal, and that one small glass is plenty.

So that's what I did. I scraped some lemons and let the scrapings soak for two weeks (the color never went away). And added the sugar syrup. I only used about a cup's worth before I thought it was way too sweet.

Anyway, I now have homemade limoncello and that's awesome!

I would love to make my own triple sec, but it will be a huge compromise. I'd actually have to go further for the ingredients than my own front yard.

Tonic, Part II of XXIVIXDMXIV

In an effort to improve on the tonic water I made, which was barky, I tried a couple of things. First I re-filtered it through another coffee filter. This didn't seem to make a difference on either the flavor of the tonic or the resulting barky coating of my tongue.

Then, since I had a Britta filter that needed changing anyway, I used it to filter some of my tonic syrup. The resultant liquid was thinner (less syrupy), lighter in quinine taste (in a good way), but also losing most of the citrus flavor and sugar (in a bad way). So that was a failure as well.

Should I try again, I think the recipe could use less powdered cinchona bark, and perhaps I should try making a tea bag with it in the first place rather than putting it in raw. I also think it could use a few other flavors to make it more interesting. I've spoken with the Fever Tree people, the Q Tonic Water people, Todd Smith of Bourbon and Branch, and Jeffrey Morgenthaler about their versions so I have some ideas.

For now I have to go finish my story on what the pros are doing before I continue my amateur experimentation.

Tonic, Part I of XXIVIXDMXIV

I'm doing the tonic water research that everyone else is doing right now, and as part of the experiment I decided to make my own. I followed the recipe from Kevin Ludwig from Park Kitchen in Portland as published in Imbibe Magazine.Luckily, my bag of powdered cinchona bark did not break open like it did for "Food Dude", nor did I spill syrup all over my kitchen. Nor did I cut myself while chopping lemongrass nor burn myself on the oven. So all in all, it was a better cooking experience than when I do it with food.
I also followed suggestions in the comments for that article: allowing the mixture to sit overnight before filtering out the cinchona bark, and not adding the sugar until after the filtering.


But how does it taste? Just okay, I'd say. The initial sip is terrific, with a good balance of sweetness and bitter quinine with a little lingering sharpness. However it doesn't linger for as long as I want it to, and after the second sip my tongue feels like it's coated with bark dust. This "barky tongue" then dominates the flavor in subsequent sips with or without added gin.


I think I'm going to try to filter it a second time and see if it improves but that's going to be harder now with the sugar in it.Quest for tonic continues!