Tonic Syrup

Homemade tonic syrup is pretty easy once you have the ingredients and equipment. The syrup is used w/ gin, club soda, and limes to make a truly great gin and tonic. Once again, Kevin Liu provided the recipe for this from which I have deviated little. He credits Jeffrey Morgenthaler, so we stand on shoulders of giants with this recipe.

This yields about  cups of syrup; enough for 16 cocktails.

Ingredients

• 40 g cut Cinchona Bark (Peruvian bark; this linked purchase contains 435 g)
• 1.5 cups water
• 220 g granulated sugar
• 6.8 g Citric Acid (about 0.5 tsp). 

Directions

1. Boil the  water on the stove in a pot. Once boiling, add the Cinchona bark and off the heat. Cover and let steep for 20 minutes. 
2. Strain the bark liquid mixture through mesh strainer.  You can re-strain it through a coffee filter or a jury-rigged AeroPress. I've always used the AeroPress setup so cannot comment on the regular coffee filter. Might come out a bit cloudier, but will still taste great I'm sure. 
3. After filtering, add the sugar and citric acid and place everything into a sealed container (like Tupperware).  Shake until everything is dissolved. Pour into a stoppered bottle or one with a screw cap. 

To make a gin and tonic...

To a highball glass, add 2 oz gin, 1 oz syrup, and 3 ounces of carbonated water. I sometimes drop the tonic syrup to 3/4 oz.  Add ice, stir. Garnish with lime wedge or two. 

In this particular bottling I added some dried lavender during the steeping process. It added a bit of lavender flavor. It also made the color much more red than the usual orange I get. 

Carbonating at Home

I like making my own tonic syrup for gin and tonics, but found keeping fresh carbonated water on hand a pain. I already had a CO2 tank with a regulator for a keg I keep in the basement fridge. I read about a special "cap" you can purchase and a quick-connect hose for the CO2 source.

I hooked everything up and used some speny plastic soda bottles I'd been saving. Filled the bottles with water up to about 6 inches from the top. Chilled them and put them in freezer for a while to get the water as cold as possible. Water temp and CO2 solubility are inversely proportional if I recall correctly.

Followed directions adding CO2 at about 40 psi and shaking like crazy. Product delivered. Removed special cap and put original cap on the bottle and left in fridge.

I'm planning to make my own ginger beer and carbonate it using this setup (Morgenthaler has a recipe for ginger beer). Or just make ginger syrup and adding carbonated water. Kevin Liu has a suggestion to add tincture of cayenne to substitute a longer lasting component of ginger that degrades quickly. 

Anyway, this works well and discounting the labor, comes out pretty cheap for carbonated water. 

Thanks to Kevin for improved technique. He posted on Serious Eats and has excellent suggestions. 

Dry Aged Steak (In a Bag)

This turned out great and I will be repeating the process.

1. Purchased Dry Steak Bags from http://www.drybagsteak.com/. Cost (with shipping was about $30 for three bags and "little strips for sealing in Foodsaver". Shipping was high at this site, but they arrived VERY quickly.  
2. Purchased 11.3 pound NY strip loin from Costco. Cost was 6.89/lb so total was about $78.
3. Followed Dry Bag Steak directions to the letter. They have pretty great videos on their site if you can hear the voice over above the "background" music. My corner seals separated the "outer" portion of the bag partially. I did a double seal that did not cut off the corner and am satisfied I have a good seal and vacuum. 
4. Placed on rack fat cap up (required) in rimmed baking sheet (just in case it leaked). 
5. I'm waiting three weeks.

Three weeks later...

Everything turned out as expected. The steaks were dense, flavorful, and tender. The final weight after trimming was around 7 pounds. I probably could have trimmed less, but was playing it safe. Final cost was about $12.50/lb for dry aged steak (including the cost of the bag) Next time I will probably go four weeks.