How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

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dmacnz
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How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by dmacnz »

Hi

I’m looking to create a more personalized gin recipie.
(Vapour infusion runs)
I have a fair amount of neutral and 30L column still with gin basket.

What’s the best way to experiment with different botanicals on their own. Can I just swap out the gin basket ever 100 ml or so during the run?!
Or do I need to complete the entire run per botanical and then start again with the next spice?!

Thanks
Dan
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NZChris
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by NZChris »

Try it.

I use a small still so that the botanical is subjected to the full range of temperatures of my normal gin runs.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by dmacnz »

NZChris wrote: Sat Nov 07, 2020 10:59 pm Try it.

I use a small still so that the botanical is subjected to the full range of temperatures of my normal gin runs.
Thanks Chris. This was my thoughts. If I just swap out the the basket mid run. I won’t get the whole temp cycle or even the time to extract the oils..... make me wonder..
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by howie »

i'm still pondering about my first attempt too, having just got my gin caddy for infusion method.

my scribbled notes from the last couple of months reading up, say that different flavours come through at different parts of the run.
cinnaman & dill early
then citrus & florals
then cardoman, anise, angelica & orris
finally heavy juniper, ginger, pepper & cloves.
so it sounds like you might miss certain flavours if you swap things out mid-run
so, if i do individual botanicals, i was going to do them each on a small still (2-4l maybe)for the whole run.
i might get a chemistry set for xmas :D
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by NZChris »

I use a saucepan and steamer from a charity shop and some copper from the scrappy, flour paste seals, existing Liebig. It might have taken a couple of hours to build once I'd found the pan. It has made a lot of gin and quite a few essences.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by Saltbush Bill »

howie wrote: Sat Nov 07, 2020 11:39 pm my scribbled notes from the last couple of months reading up, say that different flavours come through at different parts of the run.
cinnaman & dill early
then citrus & florals
then cardoman, anise, angelica & orris
finally heavy juniper, ginger, pepper & cloves.
Think you might learn more by less scribbling and more doing.....the way those flavours are coming through are arse backward to anything Ive ever experienced.
Ive always run everything in the boiler but I doubt the order that flavours come through in vapour infusion is that much different.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by dmacnz »

So perhaps a option is to design 3 different recipies and then run 3 different gins and see which one goes in the correct direction. And then go from there.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by howie »

Saltbush Bill wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 1:29 am
howie wrote: Sat Nov 07, 2020 11:39 pm my scribbled notes from the last couple of months reading up, say that different flavours come through at different parts of the run.
i know i am talking amongst experts here, and i have yet to experiment.
but the point was that that changing the basket mid run with different individula botanicals doesn't seem a good thing to do.
maybe i have written those things arse about.
i believe the guy was asking about running individual botanicals and creating individual essences for blending.
the question was not about how i macerate or not.
thanks anyway
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by MtRainier »

You could do small batches of essence in something like this instead:

https://pelletlab.com/product/master-di ... ation-kit/

Get rid of the rubber stopper and thermometer in favor of a ground glass stopper. The heater power control doesn't cycle on and off. It's a constant wattage which is appropriate for distilling. The Graham condenser will likely fill with condensate if you run it like they have in the picture, but it isn't a big deal.

I honestly don't know if posting a small glass lab distiller like this runs afoul of any site safety rules. If it does please feel to remove it. I wouldn't recommend glass for a large still for sure.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by howie »

MtRainier wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 4:39 am
I honestly don't know if posting a small glass lab distiller like this runs afoul of any site safety rules. If it does please feel to remove it. I wouldn't recommend glass for a large still for sure.
that is similar to what i was alluding to re chemistry set.
there is a school of thought that , if you want to get completely anal about your gin, run all your botanicals individually through something like this.
blend to your liking, then replicate on masse.
unfortunately, a site moderator goes off on a macerate/infusion tangent.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by OtisT »

howie wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 5:07 am
MtRainier wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 4:39 am
I honestly don't know if posting a small glass lab distiller like this runs afoul of any site safety rules. If it does please feel to remove it. I wouldn't recommend glass for a large still for sure.
that is similar to what i was alluding to re chemistry set.
there is a school of thought that , if you want to get completely anal about your gin, run all your botanicals individually through something like this.
blend to your liking, then replicate on masse.
unfortunately, a site moderator goes off on a macerate/infusion tangent.
Dude, you may read a lot but need to work on listening/understanding what you are reading before giving respected contributors, moderator or not, a slap in the face. Lots of stuff written here on HD is correct and a lot of stuff is not correct. From what you shared from your notes about when specific smells come through in a run, you either wrote things down incorrectly or you wrote down some bad info. He was telling you that in his experience (and I agree from my experience) that the order of that list is extremely incorrect. Did you catch that part of his attempt to help educate you?

He did state that his experience is from macerating and speculated it would be the same for vapor infused, but he gave you that info that is important for you to know and it could expand your understanding of some complexities to consider if you chose to listen. Seems to me that he was sharing his gap in potential knowledge, like any humble person who understands the complexity of the subject would do.

I recommend you check your attitude if you want help from folks more experienced than you. I’ve offended a few folks at times too. Best to apologize and move forward. Seems like most folks here are a forgiving lot if you keep an open mind to others’ opinions and don’t disrespect people trying to help you. Otis
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by Saltbush Bill »

Thank you for saving me some typing Otis :thumbup: I think youve covered about anything I might have been going to say.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by kiwi Bruce »

+1 Saltbush and Otis
AND there is an old adage..."the whole is not equal to the sum of it's parts"...simple stated, you can run five or ten or twenty different herbs or spices and then blend them together...2 cc of part A, 5 cc of part B etc and from this you'll think you have a handle on a complete recipe, you'll collect your total botanical list from your individual "test runs" and make a final "all herbs in" gin run. The results CANNOT POSSIBLE come in even close to what you expected because one of the most important factors is the interplay during the distillation of the oils that form the flavor compounds of each of the herbs and spices. These are organic chemical bases/amines that react with each other in totally surprising and unexpected ways.
My suggestion...set yourself a standard "bench mark" recipe (there must be a good dozen or more in our "Tried and True" here on HD forums) pick one and run it...NOW you'll have an idea of where you stand...make changes ONE HERB AT A TIME...pain in the bum...no not really, we get to drink our experiments and even our worst effort are better that most of the commercial swill passed off as "Gin" in most liqueur stores around the globe.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by howie »

Saltbush Bill wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 1:04 pm Thank you for saving me some typing Otis :thumbup: I think youve covered about anything I might have been going to say.
i will be the first to apologize.
i took offence at your reply, went away, came back and re-read, no smilie or anything.

your comments on flavours are interesting, i have checked my notes and a 'respected source' came up with that flavour order.
even another 'respected article' says that the florals come early and the earthy flavours later in the run.
so i'm a little confused but tend to believe a actual experienced distiller like yourself & otis
but at least we can agree that different flavours come out at different times of the run and maybe that some flavours 'ghost' all the way through.

the input i was trying to give was this...
"you may be tempted to charge the boiler with a larger volume of neutral then periodically put the still into full reflux and change the basket with a different botanical.that is possible, however this is not recommended as a full run of each botanical is required to get the full flavour. this is due to the flavour profile of each botanical changing over the course of a run. each botanicals flavour extraction profile differs, some are dominant at the start with nothing in the middle of the run, with more coming out at the end"
this makes perfect sense,(doesn't it?) :lolno:

and kiwi bruce makes a good point.
even if you did run each botanical individually then blended away, when you scaled up the recipe it may not taste similar due to interplay.
so i started this hobby with gin infusion in mind, now it's more like gin confusion.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by NZChris »

howie wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 7:49 pm even if you did run each botanical individually then blended away, when you scaled up the recipe it may not taste similar due to interplay.
And that could be a good thing, or a bad thing. You don't know until you try it with the particular combination you are playing with.

My next gin experiment has some of the botanicals run as normal, but at essence strength, then I will blend in four essences to try and get a profile I want. Three of the essences will have been made made using fresh ingredients harvested in season. I've still got two to go.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by bluedog »

In my experience and from a post I've read from Odin, the lighter citrus oils come first, then juniper makes up the middle, then the earthiness of spice and roots in the "tails". To way over simplify it.
I have no real interest in copying someone else's recipe. I just macerated equal grams of various botanicals in small jars, and blended various combinations at recorded ratios to taste. Then macerated those same ratios together in a full batch size and ran it. Kinda lazy, and it completely changed after running it (for the better) as other here have said it would, but it gave me a balanced gin with flavors I like, and I've been slowly tweaking that same recipe ever since. I haven't tried a new recipe yet, so I may have just gotten lucky.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by OtisT »

howie wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 7:49 pm but at least we can agree that different flavours come out at different times of the run and maybe that some flavours 'ghost' all the way through.
True. I’ve only made a simple gin recipe 4 or 5 times so far. Always maceration except I put citrus in a basket. Each time I found the citrus and juniper came over from the first drops and left quickly, especially the citrus possibly because there was so little of it. That’s why fores need to be cleaned out really well from your neutral, because if you need to pull more than a smidgen of acetone out, you will miss some goodness. I found Orris and Angelica at the very end of the run. I believe it was Coriander that seemed to run throughout. Otis
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by zapata »

I have a lab glass still (which btw, yeah things like mason jar thumpers ought to be frowned upon, but lab grade glass? It's in every university, pharm lab and research center in the world). A couple "boilers" from 500 to 4,000 ml. It's a small batch gin and individual essence dream machine. Highly recommended for those who like to tinker and tailor.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by dmacnz »

Thanks all for the advise and info.

I ended up doing 3 different runs with a slightly modified recipe each time.
All 3 runs were made in a 30L plated reflux still and all botanicals were in a vapor basket.
I used 800mls of 95% neutral and tops it up with water to be 40% abv

Gin 1 was a slight mod on my previous gin. Flavor was very light (compared to the last batch of a very similar recipe).
Gin 2 again, very similar to gin 1 however I simplified the recipe and replaced tangerine for lemon, This came out my favorite of the 3 samples.
Gin 3 got funky, I added star anise, grape fruit skin and Sichuan pepper. The pepper was interesting but didnt compliment the other botanicals.

My main lesson learnt was.... Scaling is very hard! All of these gins were based on my last gin which was around 30g/L of botanicals. The original gin had almost intense flavour and extremely nice aroma.
These 3 sample gins have almost zero aroma and very light delicate flavours.

Due to the huge different in flavour intensity I am jumping to conclusions that
-I either stuffed up my last calculations of botanicals!
or
-the small sample runs didn't give enough time for the vapours to full extract the oils and flavours from the gin basket.??

I am using a spreadsheet to design my recipes using 30grams total botanicals per 1L of ethanol in the boiler. giving me around 17g of juniper, 8 grams of coriander etc per 1L of 100% abv in the still.
Should I do a larger run to confirm i have some sort of scaling issue?! Or have i stuffed up my botanicals per/L concept?
Thanks
Screenshot (191).png
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by Rrmuf »

Saltbush Bill wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 1:29 am
howie wrote: Sat Nov 07, 2020 11:39 pm my scribbled notes from the last couple of months reading up, say that different flavours come through at different parts of the run.
cinnaman & dill early
then citrus & florals
then cardoman, anise, angelica & orris
finally heavy juniper, ginger, pepper & cloves.
Think you might learn more by less scribbling and more doing.....the way those flavours are coming through are arse backward to anything Ive ever experienced.
Ive always run everything in the boiler but I doubt the order that flavours come through in vapour infusion is that much different.
This has been my (limited) experience when using vapour infusion of botanicals as well. Makes it kind of fun when doing cuts, blending etc actually. So I am surprised that infusion of one botanical on its own would be effective at all ; I don't doubt it could work, but it seems alot of work to achive what sort of happens naturally. Do let us know how that works out if you try it.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

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dmacnz wrote: Tue Nov 10, 2020 5:27 am Thanks all for the advise and info.

I ended up doing 3 different runs with a slightly modified recipe each time.
All 3 runs were made in a 30L plated reflux still and all botanicals were in a vapor basket.
I used 800mls of 95% neutral and tops it up with water to be 40% abv

Gin 1 was a slight mod on my previous gin. Flavor was very light (compared to the last batch of a very similar recipe).
Gin 2 again, very similar to gin 1 however I simplified the recipe and replaced tangerine for lemon, This came out my favorite of the 3 samples.
Gin 3 got funky, I added star anise, grape fruit skin and Sichuan pepper. The pepper was interesting but didnt compliment the other botanicals.

My main lesson learnt was.... Scaling is very hard! All of these gins were based on my last gin which was around 30g/L of botanicals. The original gin had almost intense flavour and extremely nice aroma.
These 3 sample gins have almost zero aroma and very light delicate flavours.

Due to the huge different in flavour intensity I am jumping to conclusions that
-I either stuffed up my last calculations of botanicals!
or
-the small sample runs didn't give enough time for the vapours to full extract the oils and flavours from the gin basket.??

I am using a spreadsheet to design my recipes using 30grams total botanicals per 1L of ethanol in the boiler. giving me around 17g of juniper, 8 grams of coriander etc per 1L of 100% abv in the still.
Should I do a larger run to confirm i have some sort of scaling issue?! Or have i stuffed up my botanicals per/L concept?
Thanks
Screenshot (191).png
DO be careful when it comes to the Cassia..... I find it very easily overwhelms and dominates the flavour of the Gin atleast via vapour infusion.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by Rrmuf »

Saltbush Bill wrote: Sun Nov 08, 2020 1:29 am
howie wrote: Sat Nov 07, 2020 11:39 pm my scribbled notes from the last couple of months reading up, say that different flavours come through at different parts of the run.
cinnaman & dill early
then citrus & florals
then cardoman, anise, angelica & orris
finally heavy juniper, ginger, pepper & cloves.
Think you might learn more by less scribbling and more doing.....the way those flavours are coming through are arse backward to anything Ive ever experienced.
Ive always run everything in the boiler but I doubt the order that flavours come through in vapour infusion is that much different.
That's interesting: I've only done one (Odin's Gin) run with maceration - previous few attempts at Gin were vapour infusion - but I did find more separation of botanicals via vapour infusion over the boiler infusion. Having said that the Juniper in the Odin Gin *did* punch through more.
NB: I am still learning!!!! .... any excuse to do more Gin runs! :mrgreen:
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by NZChris »

dmacnz wrote: Tue Nov 10, 2020 5:27 am Due to the huge different in flavour intensity I am jumping to conclusions that
-I either stuffed up my last calculations of botanicals!
or
-the small sample runs didn't give enough time for the vapours to full extract the oils and flavours from the gin basket.??
If I'm doing a Carter Head run with all of the botanicals in the basket, I stretch the run out to at least five hours. This is still a lot less time than a commercial Carter Head distillery would use.

My essence runs are done with the botanical in the boiler and take about an hour. I wouldn't bother using a basket unless there was some very good reason to.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by dmacnz »

NZChris wrote: Tue Nov 10, 2020 4:48 pm
dmacnz wrote: Tue Nov 10, 2020 5:27 am Due to the huge different in flavour intensity I am jumping to conclusions that
-I either stuffed up my last calculations of botanicals!
or
-the small sample runs didn't give enough time for the vapours to full extract the oils and flavours from the gin basket.??
If I'm doing a Carter Head run with all of the botanicals in the basket, I stretch the run out to at least five hours. This is still a lot less time than a commercial Carter Head distillery would use.

My essence runs are done with the botanical in the boiler and take about an hour. I wouldn't bother using a basket unless there was some very good reason to.
Thanks Chris. Yep using a carter head. (My limited distilling vocab).

So the length of time of the run greatly effects the about of flavour in the final product. This confirms my thoughts on the lack of flavour in the small runs.
I will try a larger run today and see how I it goes.
Thanks
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by NZChris »

I'm not talking about larger runs, just longer runs. My 60 minute runs are the same volume as my 6 hour runs.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by zapata »

Now that is an interesting point. I have to admit that's a detail I pretty much completely makeup at the time based on vague feelings and intuition.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

Post by dmacnz »

NZChris wrote: Tue Nov 10, 2020 6:55 pm I'm not talking about larger runs, just longer runs. My 60 minute runs are the same volume as my 6 hour runs.
Cheers mate. Makes sense while my original gin is strong as hell! 6hr run. Vs 30min sample runs.

I’m also finding that the flavour seems to developer over a few days after proofing.
The gins thats had bugger all flavour now have a fair amount.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

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Related Question: Does anyone have any sense as to whether certain botanicals are better infused in the vapour path vs the boiler? Or is the consensus that they are ALL better placed in the boiler?
-- Rrmuf
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

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Rrmuf wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 4:07 am Related Question: Does anyone have any sense as to whether certain botanicals are better infused in the vapour path vs the boiler? Or is the consensus that they are ALL better placed in the boiler?
From my limited research. Most prefer citrus or flowers in the basket. It seems the juniper and coriander thrive in the boiler.
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Re: How to do individual botanical “sample” runs?!

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dmacnz wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 5:28 am
Rrmuf wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 4:07 am Related Question: Does anyone have any sense as to whether certain botanicals are better infused in the vapour path vs the boiler? Or is the consensus that they are ALL better placed in the boiler?
From my limited research. Most prefer citrus or flowers in the basket. It seems the juniper and coriander thrive in the boiler.
I *think* that is what I see too ...... But let's see what the more experienced folks have to say.
-- Rrmuf
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