Everyday Yumminess: Homemade Tonic Water

This is something I'd been wanting to try for a while so, once I got a soda siphon for Christmas, it shot to the top of my queue.  Homemade tonic water (or, more accurately, tonic concentrate that is mixed with soda water to make tonic water) isn't necessarily going to save you any money over generic-brand store-bought versions.  This is a case where the DIY version is superior because it lets you tweak the flavors to your palate.  (I, for example, hate how sweet store-bought tonic water often is... so when I made my own I cut back on the agave the recipe called for and it was perfect...)

I used a recipe I found online here as a starting point, and it seems to be the one that pops up most often on the interwebs.  All but one (or two, depending on your access to lemongrass at your local stores) of the ingredients are available easily or are already in your pantry.  The weird one is Cinchona bark, which I ordered a pound of online.  The remaining ingredients are limes, lemons, oranges, lemongrass, allspice, citric acid, and a pinch of kosher salt.

Everything goes into a pot with water and is brought to a boil before simmering, covered, for 20 minutes.  Because my pot was slightly under-sized and I feared boil-over, I only partially covered and thus ended up reducing a little extra...

I strained the simmered mixture in two phases: first with a mesh strainer and then through coffee filters to get any remaining powdery cinchona bark out...

Once you've strained your mixture, you re-warm and mix with agave.  The recipe calls for 3/4 cup agave per cup of your mixture, but I went with closer to 1/2 cup.  (I had a 46-ounce bottle of agave nectar, which is 3.875 cups, so I went ahead and added the whole thing to my 7 cups of tonic mixture to spare myself from measuring gooey stuff.)  To turn your concentrate into tonic water, simply mix 0.5 to 0.75 ounces concentrate with 2 ounces soda water (either from your handy-dandy siphon or store-bought) and enjoy in whatever proportion to gin is your preference... 

Even though I considered this to be a test run, I'm not sure what I would change next time... This was pretty much exactly the tonic water I wanted.  Complex, slightly bitter, mildly sweet, with strong citrus tones...   Yum.