Floral notes in Gin and advice in general

[iamkeiran]

Hi everyone

I have been playing around with Gin, whiskey, and brandy now for a year. Honestly, i get so lost in all the information on here that my head spins every time I come here to read on a topic

I have an alembic pot still for making my gin. I have a nice little red book that I document every single recipe I try and in what measure, just in case I hit the jackpot on the perfect gin. Lately, I have been having difficulty with a lot of my gin runs.

1) despite using dried juniper (20-25g) per 2L run, I have tried smashing it first and putting into a column in my alembic, not smashing it, macerating it. Lately I have noticed hardly any Juniper flavour in the gin run.

2) I tried the Roku japanese gin with sakura in it and I was wondering what the best method is to have this great aftertaste of floral notes. I have added rose to my gin runs and had no real floral aftertaste. I have added rose after a gin run, via infusion for 3-5 days and this actually really softened the gin substantially. I have added lavendar, fresh and dried, to a gin run, which gave no floral notes, but was still nice and soft. I want to try jasmin and wondered what would be the best way to go about this.

3) random question also while I am getting myself an education on this, i have done a basic gin run, then infused for a week after. I did this with rubarb and ginger, and it worked out great. Then I tried a basic gin run with cucumber and mint, and the first day it tasted great. so filtered it and bottled. After a week the smell was no longer cucumber and mint.. it was pretty gross. So was also wondering, what is the best way to have these cool infusion style gins that last longer than a day? Did I do something wrong here? Or am I expecting too much from my gin?

Thanks everyone who made it this far in my rant. Each day I follow the rabbit down the rabbit hole on these threads and try not to bother anyone with questions but sometimes I just hit a wall with not finding what it is I am exactly trying to work out. I feel like we should organise get togethers in regions to discuss techniques, whilst drinking gin

Cheers!

KP

[OtisT]

What is the base spirit you use for making gin?
How clean (cuts wise) is your spirit before using it for making gin?
What kind of cuts do you make on your gin run?

Regarding your lack of juniper, I am wondering if you are loosing most of it in your cuts. Juniper oil comes over very early in a gin run and dissipates quickly as the run progresses. If you are making a heads cut like you would for a whiskey or rum spirit run, you are cutting out your juniper, citrus, etc. To capture all those good strong oils that come and leave early in a gin run, you need a base spirit that is so clean that you don’t need to make a heads cut (just a tiny foreshots cut).

Otis

[NZChris]

I'd suggest you deal with one problem at a time. Maybe start with your distilling protocol?

[iamkeiran]

What is the base spirit you use for making gin?
How clean (cuts wise) is your spirit before using it for making gin?
What kind of cuts do you make on your gin run?

Base Spirit is a neutral I made from TPW recipe on here, run through a reflux still at 98% ABV.
I think you hit the nail on the head, my cuts are too big to start. I am used to a whiskey run where you have a large head cut. I will try smaller cuts as I am probably discarding a lot of the juniper flavour at the beginning. Thanks for that!

With the floral notes, I am assuming then that maybe that is the same issue, i am discarding the floral also?

[StillerBoy]

I think you hit the nail on the head, my cuts are too big to start.

I'm assuming the statement is meant for the gin run..

But what about you spirit run with the reflux column.. how do you cut your heads and how fast are they extracted..

Because as Chris stated, doing better spirit first is a large part of the gin process..

Mars

[Alchemist75]

Well it's hard to account for the total loss of botanical notes unless your gin making set up is somehow malfunctioning or your sense of taste is shot. No matter how neutral or not neutral a spirit is the flavors of the botanicals should come through very clearly, they may even be strong enough to completely swamp out the flavor of the spirit itself in some cases. As for rose I can say that this is an absurdly delicate note in any beverage up to and including tea. Especially if the petals are dried the essence of rose is elusive at best and behind the bite of ethanol it can be nearly impossible to detect, very faint. Rose is best used fresh, straight off the bush which is why I rarely bother with it. The oil yield even on high quality fresh rose is painfully low hence the price on damask rose oil. If mingled with other botanicals it may as well not be there at all, anything even remotely stronger in aroma/flavor will bury it and unless your taste buds are especially acute you won't be able to detect it. Kinda sad really, I love roses. Perhaps try quadrupling the amount you've been using? There's a way to get it to come forward more but I'll tell you here shortly.
Jasmine is equally troublesome if not moreso. Subtle, subtle, subtle! Jasmine oil is very expensive and that's because it's very hard to get enough of the oil via distillation to fill a vial never mind trying to distill a handful or two in with ethanol. Best of luck with that! Maybe add a pound or two of FRESH jasmine in the boiler? Better yet in a steam distillation set up. You're chasing subtle chimerae of flavors with your rose and jasmine! Got fresh flowers? No? You'll need a few pounds I reckon. One approach to trying to make such subtle notes pop is to distill them by themselves and then water down your product to 25%-30%. Maybe add a little simple syrup.
I've played with dried rose but it's not easy to really capture that aroma in a way that's worth your while, it's just so delicate and forget distilling it with any other botanicals unless you combine your rose and jasmine in LARGE dried quantities into a single product, maybe water down to 30% and sweeten it.
As for your first problem i'd check over your equipment to make sure things are working correctly. Perhaps also the quality of the herbs you're working with? Where are you sourcing them from? Seems a bit odd, I produce a broad range of botanical liquors and while some experimental blends are not what I'm shooting for I never have trouble extracting flavors either by direct heating or by steam extraction.

[Alchemist75]

oh, I forgot to add....
Cucumber and mint: pain to work with via post distillation masceration.
Comes out tasting rather like fresh grass clippings al a mint. I've tried it, hated it and swore not to do it again. Cucumber in particular is yet another subtle note, the flavor is light and it extracts poorly into anything over 30% ethanol. The higher proof stuff will entrain the water from the cucumber but that's mostly it. Mint is best handled by distilling it otherwise it's basically tincture of mint which tastes rather like, well, tincture of mint. Bleh. The attempt to capture essence of mojito has been tried and was rejected. Subtle things are nice but as I stated before are difficult to capture.

[NZChris]

I've done a cucumber essence run with partially sun dried slices and it tastes fantastic and is very strong. I wouldn't advise putting cucumber in the still with the rest of the botanicals until you have worked out what ratio you like.

For any botanical you are having trouble with, distilling at essence strength for future blending is the way to go. You can make essence out of produce harvested in it's prime then add it to your basic gin which you also cunningly made at essence strength by using a high ratio of botanicals to base spirit

[iamkeiran]

Jasmine is equally troublesome if not moreso. Subtle, subtle, subtle! ... You're chasing subtle chimerae of flavors with your rose and jasmine! Got fresh flowers? No? You'll need a few pounds I reckon. One approach to trying to make such subtle notes pop is to distill them by themselves and then water down your product to 25%-30%. Maybe add a little simple syrup.
As for your first problem i'd check over your equipment to make sure things are working correctly. Perhaps also the quality of the herbs you're working with? Where are you sourcing them from? Seems a bit odd, I produce a broad range of botanical liquors and while some experimental blends are not what I'm shooting for I never have trouble extracting flavors either by direct heating or by steam extraction.

Thanks for this! Maybe I am expecting too much from my palette. lol. The rose, I get from my garden, I have a massive rose garden with all types of strong to mild roses. Jasmine I sourced from a herbal shop in Melbourne, organic dried jasmine. Lately I have just been brewing Jasmine tea and adding gin to make a cocktail to get the jasmine flavours. I do the same with the whiskey I make, add it to camomile tea and some honey. It's pretty great!

The botanicals I get all from my herbal shop in Melbourne, so maybe they are not as great. The juniper has a strong smell, so it must not be that. I am going to try some of the suggestions on here and get back to you as to what I am doing wrong. Trial and error is the key.

Thanks NZchris for the advice also. I have made a cucumber hydrosol once to try and add it to the gin after, it tasted absolutely horrible. Like boiled brocholli lol. Only one mate thought it tasted good. I have concerns for him

[Alchemist75]

Chris's idea of using dried cucumber might be something to try, when I did it the cucumbers were still wet. Extracting plants while still fresh in 90%+ etoh actually draws out a broader range of phytochemicals due to the afore mentioned entrainment effect. Usually that's ideal for making herbal remedies but when chasing flavors that may or may not be such a great thing. In my attempt I used both fresh cucumbers and fresh brook mint which likely explains the grass clipping flavor. One thing I looked into as a result of this discussion was the compounds specifically responsible for cucumbers characteristic flavor. They are known as curcurbitacins and in strength they are very bitter. As it turns out, curcurbitacins are quite soluble in non polar solvents such as ethanol and methanol. That being said, extracting cucumbers, fresh especially, into higher proof ethanol may actually semi selectively draw out all those bitter nasties while leaving much behind in the plant matter. The ethanol literally concentrates the offenders in question leaving us with a bitter drink! Of course some of us LIKE bitter flavors, there's no accounting for taste. In addition to all that it might actually be that curcurbitacins will come over with the distillate further refining and concentrating their presence. Not clear on that one, may have to fool around with it using my lab gear.
Drying botanicals can destroy certain compounds found in them or alter them at any rate so while I don't know it for a fact it could well be that Chris's drying process may eliminate some or all of that bitter flavor. Likewise, the proof at which said dry cucumbers are extracted may limit the extraction of the bitter compounds. Maybe just drawing out enough to get a hint of cucumber-y goodness. In theory using dried cucumbers in 25-30% etoh would be ideal though that would have to be tested.
@NZChris: what proof did you soak those cucumbers at?

[NZChris]

9:00am Two short yellowish cucumbers sliced about 6mm thick.
Sun dried on bird netting over corrugated iron, turned once.
6:30pm Not quite dry, smell nice, decided not to risk finishing in a dehydrator.

Steeped overnight in 500ml of wheat bran vodka at 40%.

Ran with half in the boiler and half in the basket.

Finished with 225ml at 69.4%.

I didn't notice bitterness during the run.

[Alchemist75]

Actually I just looked at an article regarding the decay of cucurbitacins during the drying of wild cucumber. In it the research established that in order to preserve the cucurbitacin content the fruit had to be dried at 52 degrees Celsius. Any higher or lower and the little buggers broke down. Chris's sun dried cucumbers were probably not dried at that magic number so no bitterness would have survived. Neat. Sun dried is the ticket.
It's also worth mentioning that the species of fruit and growing conditions can effect cucurbitacin content. High stress growing conditions can increase the bitterness of the fruit.....