Mix It Cocktail Making Class at the Cambridge Gin Laboratory

Dann and I had a little overnight in Cambridge, to pretend to be tourists in a new place, essentially. When walking around one of the streets in the sunshine, we stumbled upon the Cambridge Gin Laboratory, which had a bunch of events listed on their door. They seem to do a collection of things from making your own gin to the history of gin, to a gin cocktail class that we ended up attending called Mix It!

For this class, we walked in and signed up. The front of the Cambridge Gin Laboratory is like a very fancy, well designed shop. The building itself is one of the older ones in Cambridge, having not been renovated, so it’s full of charm. In the window they have a giant gin display, which is very neat. The gin there is made locally, hence the name, and the staff can walk you through a bunch of the gins and their flavor notes as well. We signed up for the Mix It class, midweek at 3pm, and were joined by a big group of five tourists who were also taking the class.

At the start, we were introduced to our host, Sophie, who was extremely funny and knowledgeable. Dann and I were at a table together, with all of our glasses, tools, and ingredients placed in front of us. We listened to a bit about the history of gin itself, what makes gin and where gin comes from, before we got to sample our first shot of gin. There were three different gins to taste in total, with us taking about the notes and trying to guess what each one was. They all were very different!

We then started on a very basic Gin and Tonic at the Cambridge Gin Laboratory Mix It class, where we played around with the ratios of tonic to gin, until we were happy with our individual drinks. We then started playing around with a bunch of different garnishes for this one! We added in a dried orange, letting it submerge and soak, taking a sip. Then, we patted some mint and added that in. Lastly, we bent some rosemary and rimmed it around the glass, giving it more flavor. It was very interesting to taste how all these different garnishes changed the flavor of the first drink.

The second drink was similar to a cosmo, but before we started, we got to use a tool to get a large, straight lemon peel and then twisted it all up. It was really fun and Sophie was very patient with everyone as well! The Mix It cocktail making class at Cambridge Gin Laboratory just had good vibes. When our garnish was made, we then shook up our cocktail, after tasting some of the raspberry syrup and mixer that we were adding into it and guessing what it was, before shaking our cocktail up and pouring it out. This was such a pretty one! Our final cocktail was a basil, lemon and mysterious gin concoction, as the recipe for this specific gin was a secret.

All of the cocktails from the Mix It cocktail making class at the Cambridge Gin Laboratory came out so well, and we had a fantastic time chatting, creating our drinks, and learning more about the local gin. It’s just a really fabulous time.

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!