Creepy processes and the perfect Gin and Tonic
Whether you like it or not, whoever you are, everyday at work you go through several processes. Disagree? Think about your email. Personally, I work from oldest unread to most recent when I check, unless I’ve been away for a while, in which case I work the other way, so that I get the most recent mail in a thread first, and can ignore the older mails in a thread. This is a process.
Processes creep, and become increasingly complicated and subtle. It is human nature to refine and optimise anything you do frequently. The person who performs a process, or part of a process, is unlikely to even be aware of all the things that they do, and quite unlikely to be able to document them or communicate them to others. This is especially true of processes with several points where you do X every time. Oh, yes, unless Y, which happens sometimes, in which case you do Z. But only on a month with 5 Fridays.
What made me think about this? Apart from presiding over a variety of processes being passed from one person to another recently at work, I had an experience which brought this home to me in a surprising way.
As anyone who knows me knows, I like a good gin and tonic. The emphasis here is on ‘good’ though, as there are few drinks worse than a warm can of tonic water served alongside a glass with a lone ice-cube and some nasty generic gin, as many pubs seem to think gin and tonics are served. There are few places that serve a good G & T, with the exception of good restaurants and cocktail bars. There is one pub in Cambridge that does a good one, and deserves a mention: The Vine. They have a great selection of gin (not cold unfortunately) and Fever Tree tonic (more on that later).
I like to think I make a good G & T. Personal preferences aside, which I try to take account of, I take care to make the best G & Ts that I can for guests at home. Recently, for a friend, I wrote out how I make my G & Ts. I thought that the less-than-five-minute process would take me a paragraph, a couple of hundred words to communicate. I was very wrong. 1,200 words later I had explained how I make a G & T. I’ve probably even not remembered everything. Take heed, simple things are often not simple!
The destructions for anyone interested:
Gin & Tonic (the way they all should be)
Ingredients
Ice:
Use disposable ice-bags to ensure that the ice doesn’t pick up any flavour from the freezer; open ice-trays are bad for this.
Tonic:
SHOCK FIND Schweppes Indian Tonic, the non-low fat kind, nevertheless has artificial sweetener in it, sodium saccharin. (so does Britvic) Avoid avoid avoid. Needless to say NEVER use diet tonic. Unless you are making G & Ts for a diabetic. That’s allowed. So what tonics can you use? The best tonic that I know of is ‘Fever Tree Tonic Water’ available online and in Waitrose. Some supermarket own-brands, e.g. ASDA Extra Special tonic also contain no artificial sweeteners, and are good substitutes for Fever Tree. If possible, buy tonic in the small bottles or cans. Tonic goes flat VERY quickly. If you are using a large bottle, make enough G & T to use up the bottle in each round of drinks, and if you don’t quite make it, discard the rest, the next batch made with flat tonic will be horrible if you don’t.
Gin:
Other than buying Gin at least 43% so as to avoid it freezing, this comes down to personal preference. I would suggest that anyone serious about G & T should organise a blind taste test to get a side-by-side unprejudiced opinion. My taste tests leave me quite open-minded, the differences are more in the mind than in the drink. Nevertheless, I do have a soft spot for Tanqueray No. 10, although I suspect that I notice it more in other gin-based cocktails than I do in a G & T.
Lemon & Limes:
Yes, both. Not essential to have both, but a good touch if you can. How much you use of each, and which you choose to garnish is up to personal taste, but either way, buy good ones (Marks and Spencer do good ones; thanks Felix!) and keep away from ‘value bags’ etc. Buy lots, you’ll get through about 1 per G & T you make.
G & T glasses:
I would use what is often referred to as a high-ball glass, i.e. a glass for a long drink, tall and slim. The best are crystal (this is because they have more glass in them, and keep their cool better, not just to be posh) and have a crisp almost sharp brim. Any long drink glass will do though, and I’d even suggest using pint glasses before resorting to a small glass.
Pre-Preparation in order of importance (the more items down this list you can get lined up in advance, the better your G & T will be)
- Gin in the freezer for a few days, freezer on coldest setting. The exception about the freezer setting is if you only have 40% gin, in which case medium freezer setting is the best you can do, or you’ll freeze it.
- Ice, lots of it, as cold as can be, pref. in freezer on coldest setting.
- Tonic in the coldest fridge you can live with, so about 2c works well.
- Lemons and limes in coldest fridge…
- G & T glasses in the freezer (the least important, but if you are going for perfection…)
Preparation
Only take out the ingredients as you need them, the longer they stay cold the better. As soon as you have finished using an ingredient, put it straight back in the fridge or freezer ready for the next round of G & Ts. Never let anything sit on a warm counter for any longer than necessary. Work quickly, keep things as cold as possible.
- Get a chopping board and a knife (big sharp one, no messing around with paring knifes please) ready on your counter top.
- Arrange your (hopefully) cold glasses in a line behind it.
- Get the gin from the freezer and pour a good measure into each glass. How much is about taste. I like my G & Ts about 1:2 gin to tonic, but there is no shame in liking them weaker, and I often make a round of G & Ts to different strengths for each drinker. I’d rather someone with less resistance to alcohol had less gin and could join me for several rounds than over-face them with the first. If you make it too strong, or too weak, don’t be afraid to adjust at the end, or after a few sips have been drunk.
- Then put the ice in the glass. I would usually keep putting ice in a glass until the top of the top cube sits about 2/3 up the height of the glass. This is often 8 cubes or more, so make sure you have lots of ice!
- Next comes the lemons and limes. If you are expecting to do several G & Ts of an evening, you can squeeze these in advance, just make sure the squeezed juice goes straight back into the fridge. The best way to use lemons and limes, in my opinion, is a G & T with both. Why? Lime has more aroma, and more citrus-y flavour, but is sweet in comparison to a lemon and far less acidic. Half and half gets the best of both. I would use between 1/2 and 1 lemon or lime per drink. So, if you are mixing lemons and limes, that’s between 1/4 of each and 1/2 of each. Squeeze the juice over the ice. Getting some flesh from the fruit in the glass is a good thing. Retain some of the spent lemons and limes.
- Top up the glasses with tonic. I pour quite vigorously. This is because I do not mix the drinks at a later stage. An imbalance in the drink so that it gets a bit stronger as you drink it is generally a good thing.
- Garnish with lemon or lime. If someone prefers lime in their tonic, garnish with lime, etc. but still use the mix of both in the drink earlier. With the garnish, be creative, the more you can create interesting shapes, the more you have exposed the flesh of the lime or lemon, and the more it will give off a scent. Scent is important.
- Take one of the spent lemons or limes, whichever of lemon and lime you have used for a garnish, and rub some around the rim of the glass. Try to get the skin squashed against the glass so that the oils which have more fragrance get left on the rim, where they will remain and add a fantastic scent to the drink throughout the duration of it being drunk.
- Finally, squeeze a few drops from some of the spent limes or lemons (use whichever you used for the garnish) on to the surface of the drink. i.e. squeeze from a low height and don’t disturb the drink. This is another scent tool.
- If you like, you can take a straw, immerse it in the drink, cap the exposed end with your thumb, remove, and take your thumb off to taste the drink. Edit the drinks if necessary. It’s important to know what you are making so that you can fine-tune it next time, or if really bad, discard and start again.
They are now ready to serve, enjoy!
