Distilling gin essence possible? Possible good use for old airstill

[Asos21]

Well I'm officially done with the little airstill. As i don't really have a use for it i figured it could be used to make gin essence?

From doing research on here the best i can come up with so far is using odins easy gin recipe x 10 in 1 litre of 43% neutral. Collect 400ml of the essence and use 50ml per 700ml of neutral to flavour into gin. Or 71ml per 930ml of neutral and so on.

Possibly could dilute the 400ml back to 1lt and redistill with the botanicals from the first run which could give 400ml of double concentrate. So could possibly just use 25ml of this per 725ml of 43% neutral and so on.

I was kind of hoping someone may have some tried and true recipes on this or could offer further advice?

Seems like a great use for the old airstill if it actually works.

[NZChris]

Be the first. I’ve only done 5*, not using an Airstill and not OEG.

[Asos21]

I'm going to try an experiment and I'll report back the results. If anyone can post any advice in the mean time it would be appreciated.

1lt neutral 43%
600g juniper berries
150g coriander seed

24 hour soak followed by a distillation with the botanicals in the boiler. I'm hoping to create an essence which will work at about 5ml to 10ml or less.

The only thing im not really sure on is how much to take as a cut at the beginning of the run. Would 20ml be enough to remove the oils?

[NZChris]

If you are going to use the OEG bill, why would you want to remove more than Odin said to?

[howie]

i think it will louch
but seriously, i will be interested to see how you go with 600gms/150gms in 1L
that is 50 x the usual amount, as you probably know, so i'm wondering if you'll extract all the juniper/coriander flavours.
i would be thinking about how to prepare the botanicals to allow full flavour extraction.
some guys go from a light bruising to coffee grinder treatment.
i'm in the 'heavy crush with a the mortar & pestle' club and my botanicals are a tasteless mush after boiling following a 12hr maceration.
good luck

[Asos21]

If you are going to use the OEG bill, why would you want to remove more than Odin said to?

Because Odin recommends you use 12g of juniper berries and 3g of coriander seeds in 1lt of neutral 43%. I'm going to be using 600g of juniper berries and 300g of coriander which is 50 times the normal amount for the gin.

Odins easy gin is about creating actual gin through distillation after maceration. I'm trying to make a highly concentrated essence which can be used to flavour NGS into gin.

[Asos21]

i think it will louch
but seriously, i will be interested to see how you go with 600gms/150gms in 1L
that is 50 x the usual amount, as you probably know, so i'm wondering if you'll extract all the juniper/coriander flavours.
i would be thinking about how to prepare the botanicals to allow full flavour extraction.
some guys go from a light bruising to coffee grinder treatment.
i'm in the 'heavy crush with a the mortar & pestle' club and my botanicals are a tasteless mush after boiling following a 12hr maceration.
good luck

Thanks Howie should be able to report back with some results from this by tomorrow evening.

The general idea of this is to create an extremely concentrated essence that can be used with NGS say 5-10ml at a time per 1lt to turn it into gin. If this does work it would probably take me years to use the essence made from this run But it should be a fun experiment with the old airstill which is just catching dust now.

I'm going to be going with full coffee grinder treatment simply for ease of preparation and because its how I've always made my compound gins which have tasted great! I'm going to go with a 12 hour maceration and I'll test the finished results by adding 5ml to 1lt of NGS. If that doesn't work I'll increase it to 10ml. Should the flavour still not transfer over then i will redistill the infusion with the original botanicals which could be done 5 times or more should it be needed.

The still spirits essences are pretty mediocre. Hopefully i can create something better!

[NZChris]

Commercials don’t use 50*, probably for very good reasons. Let us know how it goes.

[artooks]

Hi,

How did it go ? can you please share your findings, I too also going the same route, not as much as you described but will start small to see how it goes ?

[NZChris]

Asos hasn't logged in for several months, so don't hold your breath.

Try it. I've done five times essence, several times, with very good results. You need very good neutral for diluting the essence.

[artooks]

Asos hasn't logged in for several months, so don't hold your breath.

Try it. I've done five times essence, several times, with very good results. You need very good neutral for diluting the essence.

Thanks Chris one question lets say I did x recipe 10 times and used 40 ml essence do I first dilute this in 340 ml %80 abv mix well and then dilute it to 45% ABV ? I guess this should be the way to dissolve the oils first with high abv the dilute what do you think ?

[NZChris]

Asos hasn't logged in for several months, so don't hold your breath.

Try it. I've done five times essence, several times, with very good results. You need very good neutral for diluting the essence.

Thanks Chris one question lets say I did x recipe 10 times and used 40 ml essence do I first dilute this in 340 ml %80 abv mix well and then dilute it to 45% ABV ? I guess this should be the way to dissolve the oils first with high abv the dilute what do you think ?

I don't do 10 times, so you go first. The higher the concentration, the more effect the diluent will have on the finished gin, so I wouldn't be using something that was only distilled to 80%.

I decide on the volume, dilution rate and ABV I want to try, calculate how much essence and neutral to use, mix them, then add water to the finished volume.

[artooks]

Asos hasn't logged in for several months, so don't hold your breath.

Try it. I've done five times essence, several times, with very good results. You need very good neutral for diluting the essence.

Thanks Chris one question lets say I did x recipe 10 times and used 40 ml essence do I first dilute this in 340 ml %80 abv mix well and then dilute it to 45% ABV ? I guess this should be the way to dissolve the oils first with high abv the dilute what do you think ?

I don't do 10 times, so you go first. The higher the concentration, the more effect the diluent will have on the finished gin, so I wouldn't be using something that was only distilled to 80%.

So How do you do it ?
What did you mean by " I wouldn't be using something that was only distilled to 80%. " How do you use it ?

I decide on the volume, dilution rate and ABV I want to try, calculate how much essence and neutral to use, mix them, then add water to the finished volume.

[NZChris]

I design my gin. If I want the flavor of the diluent or the base spirit in a gin, (and I sometimes do), I make it a greater part of the flavor profile than if I don't.

If I use a crappy base spirit to make a gin essence, it gets diluted and won't be as significant in the final product as it would be if I was running single strength. The more times the botanical bill is multiplied, the less influence the base spirit has.

If I used a crappy spirit to dilute the essence, the more I used, the worse the gin would be. I wouldn't expect a great gin if I diluted essence with an 80% TPW out of a pot still, and the more TPW I used to dilute it, the worse the gin would be.