I've ruined my gin.

[NZChris]

In the UK, I have to pay £27.84 on every litre of ethanol, so the tails I've kept in jars are worth quite a lot of money.

Are you sure about that? That is not the way it works in NZ, where the duty is only paid when it leaves the bonded area. If I'm licensed, I can buy 96% neutral from Fonterra without paying duty, make gin, whatever, then pay the duty on the alcohol in the bottles when I sell it, or when it leaves the bonded area.

[Welsh and Foolish]

In the UK, I have to pay £27.84 on every litre of ethanol, so the tails I've kept in jars are worth quite a lot of money.

Are you sure about that? That is not the way it works in NZ, where the duty is only paid when it leaves the bonded area. If I'm licensed, I can buy 96% neutral from Fonterra without paying duty, make gin, whatever, then pay the duty on the alcohol in the bottles when I sell it, or when it leaves the bonded area.

Yes, that's how it works in the UK. I've actually phoned HMRC up and discussed the matter with them. So I'm in a difficult position. I'm just going to save all my tails until I can figure out what to do with them. Any thoughts?

[Welsh and Foolish]

I don't re-run gin tails because it would take years to save up enough to be worthwhile running.

I also don't put my crappy tasting leftovers back into the still for the next run. I left them out for a good reason and repeatedly putting them back into the still with my finest new ingredients just sounds like a really bad idea to me.

Sounds sensible. In the UK, I have to pay £27.84 on every litre of ethanol, so the tails I've kept in jars are worth quite a lot of money. The only problem, my rectifying license won't allow me to run it through a reflux column. So what do I do? Absorb it as a business expense? Try and use activated carbon and filter it? I lose about 25% of ethanol in the process of making gin so it quickly adds up to a lot of money.

Any thoughts would be really appreciated.

Mark

If you are paying that kind of tax on it then do what you need to to salvage it if you can. Carbon would be worth trying on a few liters.

Curious, how come you can't re-run it via your reflux column? Any way to cheat and use the tails to "sour" your mash after it's done fermenting (essentially just re-running it)?

You could try (small batch first) doing 5x time the botanicals needed for the spirit in the still. Do healthy/proper cuts then blend back neutral with the "essence" you just made. That would help you from having large heads or tails collections and 4/5th would have no heads or tails as it will just be neutral/vodka blended back with the gin essence you created on the still. I haven't tried it as I'm a gin newby, but I think Chris does something like this. Not only would this save you from having extra heads and tails but would also save valuable still time as well. You could try 2 or 3 times the botanicals as well to get your feet wet trying this.

Of course!!! That's a fantastic idea Cayars. Load it with botanicals in an essence run and then dilute it with the NGS. This would dramatically reduce tails. Thanks so much for that brilliant idea. I will try this asap and get back to you with the results

[NZChris]

Yes, that's how it works in the UK. I've actually phoned HMRC up and discussed the matter with them. So I'm in a difficult position. I'm just going to save all my tails until I can figure out what to do with them. Any thoughts?

Make a plan that doesn't include buying GNS.

[Corsaire]

Maybe ask some other uk based gin rectifyers? There's quite a lot of them, but I don't know how many of them are active on this site.

[Welsh and Foolish]

Yes, that's how it works in the UK. I've actually phoned HMRC up and discussed the matter with them. So I'm in a difficult position. I'm just going to save all my tails until I can figure out what to do with them. Any thoughts?

Make a plan that doesn't include buying GNS.

I'd love to distill my own but regulations aren't as liberal as they are in New Zealand. HMRC make it prohibitive for small scale businesses to enter the market. There was one time, not too long ago, when HMRC wouldn't even consider giving licenses to distillers with kettles smaller than 500 litres. It doesn't give any room for small businesses to grow organically, rather you'd have to risk serious sums of money (usually other people's investments) to enter the market. They only recently liberalised the rectifying license (altering spirits) which is the license I have.

New Zealand have got it right IMO. And the weather is much nicer....

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

Welsh, do you have your license number then? If so, you need to put your license number in your signature line, and there is to be no more discussion here until you do. If you don't, then I need to lock and remove this thread. This conversation seems to go beyond hobby when you're concerned about money in a jar. I moved this topic to craft for now, with assumption you're trying to start a legitimate business. In any case, it goes beyond novice concerns.

Thanks.

[NZChris]

Given that, "HMRC make it prohibitive for small scale businesses to enter the market." and that you know little about gin and distilling and don't appear to have anything special to offer to your target market, I'd hazard a wild guess that you would be better off finding a different venture that doesn't require you to waste as much of your time and money as this one will.

[Fraser]

I'm curious to how this panned out, whether you were able to sort out your gin.

I have doubts about whether it's worth the effort, or even possible, to try to strip out all the oils from a botanical run and begin again fresh. If it were me I'd try running it again making a tighter tails cut. OR, if you think the problem is simply too much citrus oil in your gin I might try adding more NGS of the same proof to the gin until it eased up. That's what I've done to correct louching, but I imagine it would be worth trying if nothing else worked.