Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

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Andrew_90
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Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

Post by Andrew_90 »

I was trawling and just getting up to speed on Gin when I came across this post by Bushman in which the recommendation for citrus peel is X/100.

https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtop ... 06&t=48221

Odin's recipe calls for 1 tangerine skin. As Tangerines are seasonal I thought I would preserve and dry the Tangerine skins for later use. Over a short period of time I took a sample of 29 Tangerines, ate the contents, removed the white "pith" from the skins and weighed them wet, I then dried them and weighed them once dry. My results were that the average Tangerine skin stripped of pith weighed 21.6g wet and 6.3g dry.

In the thread cited above, the Citrus Peel appears to be in the 1/100th of the Juniper mass. Odin's recipe calculates out at 1.8X the amount of juniper, rather far removed from 1/100th.

Am I missing something, if so please school me.
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NZChris
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Re: Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

Post by NZChris »

There is a lot of citrus in OEG. I prefer to use a lot less and run longer to capture late flavors that OEG leaves in the boiler.
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Re: Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

Post by Andrew_90 »

Thanks Chris,

Odin calls for 400ml product per 1000ml maceration. Are you saying that you collect deeper i.e. that you stop at 500 or 600ml or more?
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Re: Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

Post by NZChris »

440ml. Go much further and it louches too much for my liking.
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Re: Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

Post by Andrew_90 »

Thanks
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Rrmuf
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Re: Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

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... I don't think I've even gone that far. (44% of volume)..... I've wanted to!

On the citrus, I also have learned to dial it back alot.
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Re: Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

Post by CoogeeBoy »

Yeah well I dialed up the citrus and didn't like it at first but my friends loved it and it settled after a fortnight also.

That is the takeaway for me, how much the flavours change over the first few weeks, they often mellow out as the blend.

I've done what NZ Chrus suggests also and re-mixed batches with excellent results, particularly when I had overpowering lime, on the second distillation it came through as a very subtle lime that I really liked.
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Re: Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

Post by Rrmuf »

Yeah. I've thought of investing in NZChris's method of blending from essence-strength 💪 single botanical runs but I just don't have the storage capacity yet. Some day! I might just start by preparing my more experimental additions this way and work my way towards the conventional "gin base" botanicals.

On OEG method, I have also found that a few weeks does mellow out the Gin as well.

Congrats on finding the citrus level you like. :thumbup: I might dial it up next run and take a sneak peak a bit further at the tail end of my cuts per your suggestion NZCHris. I also was considering grapefruit peels. So many experiments to run , so little time. :roll: .... again, the blended essences approach would help.
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NZChris
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Re: Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

Post by NZChris »

I've done grapefruit and it made a very nice gin. It's very nice with grapefruit instead of lemon in a G&T :D

I only do a few essences. Small runs, high in botanicals, they don't take up much room. They get blended into a simple gin made with the basic ingredients, but with double the amount of botanicals so that the Juniper etc. doesn't get too diluted when adding essences. The final gin then gets diluted with my best neutral to get the intensity I want.

I know that you can cobble together gin totally from essences, but there's no need to and I'll never get around to trying it.

To try different citrus, you could make a batch of gin with no citrus, then add various citrus essences. Even easier, add the citrus using the liqueur du pendu method.
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Re: Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

Post by Rrmuf »

Yes. I think that is where my head was at.... making a "Base" Gin with the usual ingredients and then making essences for various citruses, experimental botanicals, etc.
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Re: Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

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NZChris wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2021 11:00 am There is a lot of citrus in OEG. I prefer to use a lot less and run longer to capture late flavors that OEG leaves in the boiler.
I remove ALL the pith from my Tangerine peel. I did an exercise and over 29 Tangerines I weighed the skins wet with all the pith removed and then again dry. I averaged this out over the 29 and found that the average wet weight was 21.6g and dry 6.3g. When adding the dry Tangerine skin to my infusion it simply looked liked too much, but Odin said 1 tangerine skin per liter so 6.3g per liter it was. Simply too much for me.

My first attempt at Odin's gin was not Tangerine season so I used Lemon peel which I now believe has a better taste for my palette. I used it fresh at 19g per litre, this was Lemon forward but not unpleasant as I add a slice or two of lemon to my G&T, with this batch I did not add fresh lemon.

I believe I will return to Lemon peel rather than Tangerine and will at least drop to 25% of the volume so 1 Lemon peel per 4 liters.

Care to share how much citrus you use per liter when maceration?
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NZChris
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Re: Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

Post by NZChris »

For dried peel, somewhere around the weight of juniper/25.
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Re: Citrus Peel in Gin - A Little Confused

Post by Andrew_90 »

Cheers.
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