Gin and Tonic

Let's talk about gin and tonics. 

In an effort to get my six-pack to actually poke through (getting there) I have been reducing snacks and eating fewer carbs, along with triweekly trips to the gym working on upper body, core, and rowing. Part of that is ditching beer.

So some of this has been unpleasant, but really not so much. I don't miss carbs in food much, they are really just filler. I eat excellent bread when available, but skip out on rando sandwiches and everything else. I don't even like cake. I don't really like donuts. Zero loss. But I do enjoy a good dubbel or trippel ale once in a while.

Enter gin and tonics. I tried them, well, after too long of a story for anyone to care. They are delicious! Way better than vodka anything. Way less sugar over the top than rum anything. Way more drinkable than a whiskey, which is delicious, but only by itself, and only sipping, and $$$. Every gin seems to be the same price.

Tell me your favorite. My current go-to is Plymouth and fever-tree light (4g sugar) with some lemon. I've also popped in some cranberry juice from time to time. I recently finished a bottle of The Botanist, which was lovely. I also tried Bombay Sapphire, which was great, and Three Howls (navy strength), which was great as well.

What's your favorite?

I'll say that I'm a whiskey man and not a gin person at all but I love Rotten Little Bastard gin. I make sure I get a bottle everytime I'm in Beaufort. 

https://www.rottenlittlebastarddistillery.com/

Bombay, fresh lime and make the ice cubes using tonic water

For Carbs you can also look at Soda water vs Tonic as it is sugar free.  My favorites are Hendricks varieties.  Monkey Paw also has some good stuff as well.

Just so you know, the tonic contains quinine, to keep the malaria away! The lime keeps the scurvy away!  The juniper makes it all taste wonderfully like Christmas.

I'm a G&T fan. 

I'm a traditionalist when it comes to gin. London Dry gin. Beefeater is my favorite. I think it's the juniper berry infusion, but I really like the taste of Beefeater gin. (Whenever I trim the juniper shrubs in front of my house I start craving a Beefeater martini). I drink gin in martinis only, where I get the full flavor. Straight up, extra dry, olives, and rocks on the side. 

Also a gin guy, I dropped the tonic water as soon as I realized how much sugar is hiding there.

Gin and Seltzer water for me. Beefeater is my go-to. Middle of the price range. Fancy Gins on occasion, usually when traveling and trying local distillery flavors

I have an endless supply of my own gin, which doesn't help you. Bombay Saphire is otherwise my pick.

Q Tonic is now my tonic of choice. One can will make two G&T's in an evening.

Lime wheel.

I drank a lot of those while hanging out in the Wisconsin Dells one weekend in 1982 then continued by drinking a bottle of wine and some Stevens Point beer.  It went downhill at that point.

I haven't had a G&T since and learned an important lesson about mixing alcohol.  

Beer Baron said:

I have an endless supply of my own gin, which doesn't help you. Bombay Saphire is otherwise my pick.

Q Tonic is now my tonic of choice. One can will make to G&T's in an evening.

Lime wheel.

It helps me if that supply can somehow become -my- endless supply

Sugary and sweet but some Gin added to limeaid is a easy summer treat. 

I like a tall gin and tonic. I put a finger of Tanqueray Rangpur Lime, juice from 1/2 of a lime, and then about 12 oz of tonic.

Was a Bombay Sapphire fan and still am, but have been on Hendricks for a while. Have a bottle of Aviation Gin (because Deadpool) and its OK, but I like botanicals better. 

It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian 'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kill cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.

What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound importance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.

Douglas Adams; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Tonic is just as, if not more important as the gin.  Q tonic, and their other mixers are head and shoulders above anyone else in taste.  Real sugar, real quinine etc.  Q was hard to get previously, but it seems to becoming more widely available, I heard from my mother she even saw it in the UK last week so obviously expanding.  

For gin, Hendricks, or in a pinch Tanquaray 

pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) said:

Was a Bombay Sapphire fan and still am, but have been on Hendricks for a while. 

Came to say exactly this.

Gin and Lime-aid is the E36 M3.  I could see mixing soda water with it to reduce the amount of Lime-aid.

I wish the bars I hung out in were assured to have decent tonic water.  Usually it's cheap stuff that's from a long opened bottle and it's gone flat.  

I pretty much only drink on work trips, but G&T is always my go-to. Bombay Sapphire and Beefeater are sort of a standard in the G&T world: you can get them everywhere you go. I find people are in one camp or the other, and I fall into the former for sure. 

The tonic water is an important choice and I never realized how much impact it can have on your mix because I'd pretty much always just used the ubiquitous Schweppes, Canada Dry, or whatever they have in the well at the bar. I got a fancy new gin recently (Jewell Gin from Humbolt) and mixed it with some lite Fentiman's, for a pretty unpleasant combo. Way too much botanical and spice. Turns out all these fancy tonics can pretty easily overpower the gin. I've since tried a number of other tonics:

• Fentiman: regular & light
• San Pellegrino 
• Fever Tree: light, elderflower, Indian, regular, cucumber

Made a new rule: use basic gin when mixing with fancy tonic, or basic tonic when mixing with fancy gin. But not both. I'm sure there's some winning combos out there, but I am not willing to do the work to find them. 

Gins to look out for: 

• Freeland Gin from Portland OR. Best stuff I've tried. 
• I've only tried a few different "Old Tom Style" gins, but really liked them all. Ransom was really good. 
• Jewell Gin (mentioned already) was really interesting.  

I don't drink much anymore, but my go-to bar order is a Bombay Sapphire & tonic with extra lime. If I'm at home and feeling fancy I'll sub in Fever Tree Elderflower Tonic.

Also, don't come for me, but if I'm feeling really lazy, a Bombay Sapphire & diet ginger ale gets the job done.

Sapphire, sugar-free tonic, NFL, ice, straw.

Not long ago, I decided to try several different tonics to compare. Did them with both a Botanical and a Dry gin (my own - but both very representative of style), and on their own.

In order of my preference - note that Canada Dry may be higher for others:

Q Tonic - Winner by a mile. A bit more expensive than other options, but not excessively so, and definitely worth the premium. Best flavor and pairs well with gin. I really like the 7.5 oz cans, because I end up wasting less with an open bottle going flat.

Schweppes - solid all around. Bracing quinine. Like the Kroger brand, but better.

Kroger brand - surprisingly solid. Very affordable and not disappointing or cheap.

Canada Dry - Ironically, too sweet. The quinine is too mild.

Fever Tree - Too busy. Too much quinine. Maybe if all you want to taste is tonic. Excessively overpriced. Arguably I'd put it on par with the Kroger for my enjoyment of the liquid, but falls to the bottom purely on price.

This would be such a useful thread if I had money...

If you want to dress up a G&T and slow down your sipping, add a small float of Campari to it.

I've honestly never had a gin & tonic, but now I'm interested in trying one.  One of my coworkers would get Tanquaray & tonics when we went to lunch (usually a double).  We were known for tipping well, so he rarely had complaints about how strong it was. 

I'm also a beer guy - usually stouts and darker beers, but I am also fond of wine and more recently, whiskey. Usually some brand of Islay peated scotch, or something from one of the myriad of local distilleries. 

I've also discovered alcohol seems to mess up my ability to go to sleep, so I don't drink as often anymore, and/or I try to drink early in the evening and with a lot of water so by the time I'm going to bed, most of it is through me.

That gin & Lime-Aide combo sounds deadly. Anything sweet I tend to drink too quickly.  I have been known to kill a 6-pack of Mike's in a little more than an hour. 

In reply to Mezzanine :

Hell yeah Freeland. They make some really good gin. That's been my go-to with Q tonic lately. 

There's a really good pizza place like right across the street from their distillery too, if any of you people decide to get a bottle from the source.