Cocktails with Bitter lemon tonic water
Bitter lemon is a carbonated soft drink bittered by lemon pith and quinine and soured by lemon juice.
Substitutes for Bitter lemon tonic water
Quinine and lemon together, and quinine is the half a plain citrus soda has not got. Building it from tonic and fresh juice gets both and lets you set the sweetness.
Often confused with
Tonic water
Tonic carries the same quinine bitterness without the lemon, so it swaps in wherever the citrus is coming from somewhere else in the glass. Bitter lemon adds juice, pith and peel, and the pith is where the extra bitterness comes from.
Lemon-lime soda
Sweet and citrusy with no quinine at all. It fills the glass and leaves the bitter edge behind, which is usually the whole reason the recipe named bitter lemon.
Storage
An unopened bottle keeps for months. Once opened the quinine bitterness outlasts the fizz by a wide margin — what you lose is the carbonation, within a day or so, and a flat bitter lemon reads as merely sour.
