Distilling Gin w/ Neutral Spirit - Pot Or Reflux?

[tgf]

Opinions Wanted!

When distilling gin with a neutral spirit (assumption: NS used is 96% ABV diluted down to 50-55% ABV):
1) Is a pot still installed with a reflux column necessary, OR
2) would a simple pot still be suffice?

I've been visiting several micro-distilleries around the UK and half of them opted for a pot still with a reflux column for a "smoother" gin, while half of them opted for a simple pot still to allow more flavors to come through. Personally I've tasted all their gins and I don't think there were noticeable differences between the two in terms of smoothness or quality.

Thoughts? Would the deciding factor simply be based on the quality of the NS used?
Would love to hear some input on this!

[Saltbush Bill]

Is a pot still installed with a reflux column necessary,

Im not sure what you mean here ...its either one or the other ..it cant be both.
Your going to get a whole lot of different opinions on that, my personal preference is pot stilled gin.

Would the deciding factor simply be based on the quality of the NS used?

The quality of the base spirt plays a large part in the quality of what you end up with.

[Expat]

First the safety issue from your assumption, dilution of the neutral should be to 40% or less.

Column vs pot for gin depends on the specifics of the design and where the botanicals are added. E.g. if you macerated the botanicals and ran them through a reflux column most of the flavor would end up back in the boiler. Generally a pot still would be used for this style.

It's been discussed here many times by people wiser than me. Probably some reading is in order.

[tgf]

Im not sure what you mean here ...its either one or the other ..it cant be both.

sorry if i’m being unclear - i’ve seen a few setups where the pot still has a copper column with plates installed like in the image below (apologies if ive used the wrong equipment terms / jargon).



just wondering what impact the copper column would have on the gin if we compare it to one made without a column?

[tgf]

First the safety issue from your assumption, dilution of the neutral should be to 40% or less.

Cheers mate, thanks for the tip

[NZChris]

just wondering what impact the copper column would have on the gin if we compare it to one made without a column?

It depends on where the botanicals are in relation to the column. In some distilleries they are in a basket after the column.

[Saltbush Bill]

i’ve seen a few setups where the pot still has a copper column with plates installed like in the image below

Thats a plated column still. its not a pot or really a proper reflux still.

[Yummyrum]

You’ll find that red handled gate valve to the right of the copper onion so to direct the vapour either via the plated column or direct to the condenser . So although it looks like they have a plated column , they may be simply runing the Gin in pot still mode .
I did however a distillery that used the plated section to clean up the Nuetral Grain Spirit but they had a Carter head botanical basket after it so they weren’t sticking botanicals on a boiler and refluxing them

[tgf]

Having a gin basket installed after the plated column does make sense in order to prevent flavors from getting lost.

I'm simply wondering if having a plated column would make any (significant) difference to the gin if we are distilling from GNS. I've been doing a bit of reading and it seems that, yes, pot stills (possibly with a gin basket installed) would work really well for this type of setup, yet i can't help but wonder why quite a few distilleries choose to have a plated column installed as well - there seems to be some debate as to how effective the column is for 'cleaning' the GNS...

Would a pot still + gin basket setup be vastly different from a plated column + gin basket setup?

Totally new to distilling here, if anyone has any thoughts on this let me know. Very curious!

[Twisted Brick]

just wondering what impact the copper column would have on the gin if we compare it to one made without a column?

You can certainly create a neutral spirit via multiple pot still runs, but a packed or plated column is a more efficient method of producing a ~96%ABV product that tastes 'clean' enough to be suitable for gin. I think the consensus here is that the more packing or higher number of plates a still has, the higher the ABV that can be achieved and the cleaner-tasting it will be.

[NZChris]

I'm simply wondering if having a plated column would make any (significant) difference to the gin if we are distilling from GNS.

That would depend on the flavors in the GNS. For some products that many forum frequenters and youtubers say should be made from very clean neutral spirit, the opposite is true and there should be flavours from the grains/grapes/etc. in the base spirit, so by busting their arses to make the cleanest spirit possible they can be doing themselves a disservice.

[tgf]

been reading some more and thought i'd share reasoning behind the setup of 4 pillars who opted for the carter head + plated copper column approach:

image: https://fourpillarsgin.azureedge.net/ca ... 2f6a73.jpg

copied from their website:

Once the pot is boiling, vapours begin to rise and head up out of the top of the pot, through the botanical basket, steaming the oranges and releasing the flavours of the fruit along the way. For the next seven hours the liquid will condense and re-condense as it passes through the pot, the basket and then through seven separate plates on our column still.

These plates are crucial. Each one remains closed, acting as a mini-distillation of its own, further refining and purifying the spirit. This ensures a gin that is as smooth and as pure as… well, as something extremely smooth and pure. Let’s stick with great gin. Eventually the extremely high proof gin starts dripping from the still, at a remarkable 94% alcohol by volume. Incredibly, such is the purity of this spirit that it can be sipped (in a minute quantity) and you can taste the botanicals, and the gin-iness of the spirit. It is not "rocket fuel”, which comes from inferior distillations, it is extremely fine but VERY VERY strong gin.

just out of curiosity, i do wonder how different it would taste if they didn't use a column, especially since they positioned the column after the gin basket!

[Saltbush Bill]

Don't forget that, that is marketing talk to entertain the average person who knows nothing about Distilling.
I and two other hobby distillers went to the 4 pillars Distillery for a look around. Two of us payed for the private tasting and gin making talk that was available. The best thing that I drank there had nothing to do with gin, It was a Bloody Mary made with Vodka which had been infused with Horseradish root.

[NZChris]

Marketing hype. They rabbit on about purity, but it is the impurities that make gin gin, whiskey whiskey and rum rum. Pure spirit is just tasteless neutral. If their bought in GNS isn't good enough to be used without running it through seven plates, they should run it through the plates before they go chucking their expensive botanicals in it.

[tgf]

Thanks guys - definitely clears things up a bit for me. So assuming I'd want to distill a gin London Dry style, it doesn't seem necessary to clean the neutral spirit before adding botanical flavors at all, as that is basically stripping away some essential flavors from the base spirit.

Are there any situations that actually justify cleaning the base spirit with this small plated column at all?? (...Maybe only if the quality of the spirit is very questionable?)

[NZChris]

It depends on the qualities in the base spirit. Does it have flavors you want, or flavors you need to get rid of? Heads? Tails? Heads would probably be the worst offender and I keep them out of my gin stills.

What I often do is start by identifying what end product I want to make, then working backwards through the processes, ingredients and equipment I need to get together to be able to make it, then do runs keeping good records and tweaking each successive run to keep getting closer to what I wanted.

For gin, sometimes I need a flavored base spirit, sometimes it needs to be very clean, sometimes I can get away what most gin making forum members would consider to be tailsy crap that they wouldn't let anywhere near their stills. My runs take anything from an hour to seven hours for the same sized still charge and can be a simple boiler charge of botanicals, a mix of boiler and gin basket, a Carter Head, or even a charge of a single botanical to make an essence for blending, plus, all of those are sometimes run with several times the required quantity of botanicals in order to make a concentrated gin essence for cutting with neutral. If there is good a manual somewhere, I'm not aware of it. You have to write your own as you go.

[dlsio4]

Another interesting data point here. Anybody know this distillery? https://shortpathdistillery.com/news-it ... in-stills/

Just ran my first gin. Stripped two 6-gallon batches of Teddys Fast Fermenting Vodka wash in pot still mode. Diluted to 40% ABV. 12 hour run in reflux still with a 4+-foot, 1.5” column with 200g botanicals (juniper, tangerine, lime, ginger, coriander) in a basket on top of the column. Discarded first 200 mls, then got close to 4 liters off at 92% ABV. Citrus, especially the lime, very pronounced, in the first liter or so, then the juniper came to the fore. Made a very enjoyable martini before dinner with diluted product directly off the still. As the ABV dropped at the end, the coriander became more pronounced. Need to dilute, taste, and blend it, but so far I’m pleased with my results.

[dlsio4]

Follow up: diluted and tasted fractions today. Very flavorful, even when diluted. Kept 2 liters of distillate as the final blend, yielding slightly over 4 liters of spirit. Yummy!