Gin Alcohol Loss ratio

[Tow Mater]

Hi All, sorry in advance if I missed a post on this somewhere I only found something a bit similar which was about making high concentration gin for lack of a better description. Using OEG recipe and others it seems you sacrifice about 30% of the alcohol you put in which is a reasonable amount and better avoided or reduced if possible. Does anybody double or triple the botanicals so you effectively get 2 or 3 times the strength then dilute back to the normal strength with neutral. This way the loss of alcohol is spread across multiple bottles worth. As always thanks for the opinions and experience.

[NZChris]

It's only a problem if you are making a lot of OEG. OEG is a very easy beginner gin for newbies, but it's not the best gin you will ever make, or the most efficient use of spirit for making gin.

Many of my gins are made at two or three times essence strength.

[Tow Mater]

It's only a problem if you are making a lot of OEG. OEG is a beginner gin for newbies, not the best gin you will ever make, or the most efficient use of spirit for making gin.

Thanks. I use the same process as OEG with other recipes with similar cuts. 1.What process is a more efficient use of spirit. 2.I have a gin basket I can use in set up. Would you expect less loss of spirit using this method. Thanks

[NZChris]

I'm not a commercial producer, so I'm more concerned about the quality of the product in my drinks cabinet than how much ethanol ends up in my compost bin.

[MooseMan]

Hi All, sorry in advance if I missed a post on this somewhere I only found something a bit similar which was about making high concentration gin for lack of a better description. Using OEG recipe and others it seems you sacrifice about 30% of the alcohol you put in which is a reasonable amount and better avoided or reduced if possible. Does anybody double or triple the botanicals so you effectively get 2 or 3 times the strength then dilute back to the normal strength with neutral. This way the loss of alcohol is spread across multiple bottles worth. As always thanks for the opinions and experience.

A tactic I use is to cut as suggested in the OEG recipe, but then I power up a little and run all the remaining alcohol into a "Gin tails" bottle, then when I've got enough for a litre or two run, I add a lower level of botanicals to it (Have a taste and judge) and run that through my gin still.

I also hang a mesh ball under the riser filled with copper scrubbie for this tails run, as I feel it cleans up the result a little.

I've done this "Tails run" 3 times now, twice at 1l and lastly at 2lts and it's made a great gin every time.

I just fill these 1/3 pint bottles until there's enough for a run.

[SouthwestAl]

I think alcohol 'loss' with Gin distilling really depends on the cuts you want to make, but it is widely accepted that there is quite a bit of loss in GIn production regardless of how you do it. Commercially, this may be to do with the standard of a London Dry Gin distillate (pre-proofing) having a minimum of 70% abv, although the standards do allow for the abv to be raised up to the minimum of 70% abv by adding in the same GNS used in the distillation process.

Diluting a more concentrated Gin is basically a multi-shot distillation process, and used widely in commercial distilleries, although there are some that frown upon it as not being as authentic as the standard, single-shot process. There is a good video on this from the Gin Guild from Dr Anne Brock, where she talks through the pros and cons, and interestingly, the majority of the Gin Guild members could not identify which sample tasted was a single shot, alongside two others distilled with a 1:3 and a 1:25 ratio! If you Google Concentrate and Focus. One Shot or Not? Dr Anne Brock, Bermondsey Distillery, you will find the video.

Some recipes I develop are just not 'right' to start with, and need toning down a little to see how they are, before adjusting botanical quantities and re-distilling. In this situation, you can just dilute a small quantity of say a single bottle, and go by taste. If you do this, proof the GNS you are using down to the bottling strength before adding it, and try adding it in 10% increments to get the taste you want. I generally only use a multi-shot process for a London Dry Gin that is going to become a Gin, with a post-distillation infusion, or blended with other distilled extracts, but I may change that as I get more data, and experiment more. With energy prices as they are in many places, reducing the energy consumption on your distilling and getting a product that is of equal or at times better quality is probably a good thing.

A few important parts to note from my (fairly limited) experience:
1. The botanical ratio is not linear. It's not as easy as just multiplying your g/L of botanicals by the ratio you want. Some botanicals work like this, others don't.
2. When you mix in the GNS, in my case, normally a 1:4 ratio, so for every 1 part of distillate at say 74%, I will mix with 4 equal parts also at 74%, before proofing down to bottling strength required.
3. Quality of your starting GNS is really important. If your spirit is really not that neutral, you will notice it even more if you add in more to a concentrated Gin distillate.

[MooseMan]

Very insightful, thanks Al.

The one thing I can't quite get right yet is scalability of botanicals.
I've only scaled from 1l runs to 2.5lts so far, but I'm finally closing in on 2 recipes that I will want to make in much greater volume so I can build a stock and move my attention to the next spirit.

Do you have any kind of steer on what, of the common botanicals are in fact linear and any that need to be carefully scaled?

I'm not asking for anything on a plate, but having done months of small batch runs to arrive at flavour profiles that my wife and I, and a few chosen friends really like, the thought of running 15lts or more in the larger still only to end up with an unbalanced gin is not something I want to deal with.

[Saltbush Bill]

Thank you for that Southwest.............definatly worth a look.

[Tow Mater]

Thanks Southwest and Moose. Great info and exactly what I was looking for people’s input on.

[MooseMan]

Thank you for that Southwest.............definatly worth a look.

A very interesting watch and some pretty surprising data!

My next 1L gin run will be with a higher bot bill and given the multi shot treatment to see what I get.

Thanks for the link Bill.

[SouthwestAl]

Very insightful, thanks Al.

The one thing I can't quite get right yet is scalability of botanicals.
I've only scaled from 1l runs to 2.5lts so far, but I'm finally closing in on 2 recipes that I will want to make in much greater volume so I can build a stock and move my attention to the next spirit.

Do you have any kind of steer on what, of the common botanicals are in fact linear and any that need to be carefully scaled?

I'm not asking for anything on a plate, but having done months of small batch runs to arrive at flavour profiles that my wife and I, and a few chosen friends really like, the thought of running 15lts or more in the larger still only to end up with an unbalanced gin is not something I want to deal with.

To be honest, I don´t have a great amount of data on it yet, but I will be starting a database with the botanicals that I use. I have found the Holy Gin Trinity of Juniper, Coriander Seed and Angelica to be the main ones you need to change, probably because they are the only ones with a significantly larger proportion in the mix, and I also found the Juniper really varies depending on where it´s from and how much oil it has, which is not much help. Dehydrated Citrus Peel seems to scale on a linear basis (so for a 1:4 multi-shot, use 5x the normal amount) but liqurice root does not.

[8Ball]

… Using OEG recipe and others it seems you sacrifice about 30% of the alcohol you put in which is a reasonable amount and better avoided or reduced if possible.

I get it. You want to keep more hooch. But at a hobby level, that “sacrifice” isn’t too bad. Not to me, anyway. I just did a quick rough order of magnitude on my actual costs (less time, of course) to produce OEG style gin using Ted’s FFV as the neutral base. It worked out to be less than $10 US per finished bottle @ 45% abv. Thats 12 gin & tonic drinks per bottle @ 2 oz per drink. Add a $1 US can of Fever Tree tonic water & a slice of lime and I have an excellent drink for less than two bucks. I’m okay with that.

[Bradster68]

… Using OEG recipe and others it seems you sacrifice about 30% of the alcohol you put in which is a reasonable amount and better avoided or reduced if possible.

I get it. You want to keep more hooch. But at a hobby level, that “sacrifice” isn’t too bad. Not to me, anyway. I just did a quick rough order of magnitude on my actual costs (less time, of course) to produce OEG style gin using Ted’s FFV as the neutral base. It worked out to be less than $10 US per finished bottle @ 45% abv. Thats 12 gin & tonic drinks per bottle @ 2 oz per drink. Add a $1 US can of Fever Tree tonic water & a slice of lime and I have an excellent drink for less than two bucks. I’m okay with that.

Here here,I'll drink to that

[Saltbush Bill]

Juniper really varies depending on where it´s from and how much oil it has, which is not much help.

I find the same thing ...its one of the big variables.
Before buying I try to always test......Ive still purchased crap juniper at times, unless a berry squashes easily between the fingers and feels gooey, sticky, and smells strongly of Juniper I leave it where it is.

[NormandieStill]

Dehydrated Citrus Peel seems to scale on a linear basis (so for a 1:4 multi-shot, use 5x the normal amount) but liqurice root does not.

Odin (of OEG fame) wrote a whole article about licorice but I don't remember if it was posted here or on the I still blog. He had exactly the same problem and also talked about variation from batch to batch. There can be huge variation in flavour depending on the form of the root.

I recently did a test batch of a spicey gin recipe from here and not wanting to make a vast amount I scaled down to 1/4L. The weights of some of the botanicals were quite small and yet the form (like peppercorns for example) meant that adding one berry would take you past the target. I found myself selecting cumin seeds by size.

I've had similar issues with licorice even at 1L batches. These are problems that come up even when scaling a single shot recipe up from 1L to say 4L.

The video was interesting if not too surprising. And given that we control the quality of our neutral more closely than a commercial distiller might I would guess we can benefit even more from a multishot approach.

[NZChris]

Interesting video. According to that, most of my gins are multi-shot, as even my singles usually get some dilution.

The higher the ratio of diluent/NGS to gin concentrate, the greater the influence of the diluent on the final product. You can use this to your advantage for certain styles of gin.

I'm not commercial, so don't buy NGS, and all of the spirits that go into my gin have been through several of my stills and have been cut by me for the purposes I intend to use them for. The spirit I make for diluting gin is the most neutral I'm capable of making.

1:25 gin essence sounds insane. I've done up to 1:5. I suspect that 1:25 would get burned onto the bottom of most pot stills, so if I ever lose my marbles and try it, it will be with all of the botanicals in my large Carter Head. I suggest that you do actually calculate how big your Carter Head would need to be before you order expensive shiny bling off the internet.

[MooseMan]

Very insightful, thanks Al.

The one thing I can't quite get right yet is scalability of botanicals.
I've only scaled from 1l runs to 2.5lts so far, but I'm finally closing in on 2 recipes that I will want to make in much greater volume so I can build a stock and move my attention to the next spirit.

Do you have any kind of steer on what, of the common botanicals are in fact linear and any that need to be carefully scaled?

I'm not asking for anything on a plate, but having done months of small batch runs to arrive at flavour profiles that my wife and I, and a few chosen friends really like, the thought of running 15lts or more in the larger still only to end up with an unbalanced gin is not something I want to deal with.

To be honest, I don´t have a great amount of data on it yet, but I will be starting a database with the botanicals that I use. I have found the Holy Gin Trinity of Juniper, Coriander Seed and Angelica to be the main ones you need to change, probably because they are the only ones with a significantly larger proportion in the mix, and I also found the Juniper really varies depending on where it´s from and how much oil it has, which is not much help. Dehydrated Citrus Peel seems to scale on a linear basis (so for a 1:4 multi-shot, use 5x the normal amount) but liqurice root does not.

Good to know on the citrus Al thanks, I freeze all of mine and have found that works for me so far.

[SouthwestAl]

1:25 gin essence sounds insane. I've done up to 1:5. I suspect that 1:25 would get burned onto the bottom of most pot stills, so if I ever lose my marbles and try it, it will be with all of the botanicals in my large Carter Head. I suggest that you do actually calculate how big your Carter Head would need to be before you order expensive shiny bling off the internet.

It does, doesn't it? As you say, the sheer volume of botanicals would need some very careful management.

[SouthwestAl]

Dehydrated Citrus Peel seems to scale on a linear basis (so for a 1:4 multi-shot, use 5x the normal amount) but liqurice root does not.

Odin (of OEG fame) wrote a whole article about licorice but I don't remember if it was posted here or on the I still blog. He had exactly the same problem and also talked about variation from batch to batch. There can be huge variation in flavour depending on the form of the root.

I recently did a test batch of a spicey gin recipe from here and not wanting to make a vast amount I scaled down to 1/4L. The weights of some of the botanicals were quite small and yet the form (like peppercorns for example) meant that adding one berry would take you past the target. I found myself selecting cumin seeds by size.

I've had similar issues with licorice even at 1L batches. These are problems that come up even when scaling a single shot recipe up from 1L to say 4L.

The video was interesting if not too surprising. And given that we control the quality of our neutral more closely than a commercial distiller might I would guess we can benefit even more from a multishot approach.

100% agree - I have distilled the same recipe on everything from a 1, 20, 200 & 3.000 litre still, and every one comes out differently. Despite the variations in the stills themselves, it's the sheer time involved. When you look at the batch run time, the variance is massive, and even with an identical maceration time pre-distillation, the time that the botanicals and alcohol are in contact with the various parts of copper, vapour basket and botanicals therein, as well as the difference ratio of volume of alcohol to area of copper in each setup, the results are very different.

1 Litre - 45 minutes
20 Litres - 3 Hours
200 Litres - 8 hours
3.000 Litres - 10 hours

Incidentally, while not a multi-shot technique, (as there was no attempt to up-scale the botanicals per litre of GNS weight) I found that using a GNS to 'dilute' or tone-down the Gin produced on the 3.000 litre still, which produced by far the most powerful flavour , was the best way to get it to taste like the Gin produced in the 200 litre still, which was what I was aiming for. But the bottom line was that I found the recipes don't really scale in a linear way even in the Single Shot process, if there are variations in the still being used. It would be interesting to know if you have a 10 litre and 100 litre still that are identical, and to scale, if recipes do scale correctly, but I doubt that is a realistic scenario, considering heating sources, etc etc.

[MooseMan]

Now that you say all that about botanicals being "Boiled " for longer depending on charge volumes and still sizes/run times and the resulting profile change it brings about in the final product, it's brought something back to me that I thought about when I very first read the OEG thread.

If you carry out an extended maceration, long enough and at high enough proof to solubilize all of the required flavour compounds, then press and remove the solids before distillation, I'm confident that would be far more scalable/linear, as you are removing a huge variable from the process.

Clearly I'm not a commercial distiller, but I do have a lot of experience in scaling production operations across many sectors, so this fits my logic and the techniques I've used.

What do you think Al?

[MooseMan]

Hi All, sorry in advance if I missed a post on this somewhere I only found something a bit similar which was about making high concentration gin for lack of a better description. Using OEG recipe and others it seems you sacrifice about 30% of the alcohol you put in which is a reasonable amount and better avoided or reduced if possible. Does anybody double or triple the botanicals so you effectively get 2 or 3 times the strength then dilute back to the normal strength with neutral. This way the loss of alcohol is spread across multiple bottles worth. As always thanks for the opinions and experience.

Probably a good time to say this.
Apologies for your original thread direction getting totally derailed Tow Mater, but at the same time it's created a great bit of gin discussion, so thank you for asking it!

[SouthwestAl]

If you carry out an extended maceration, long enough and at high enough proof to solubilize all of the required flavour compounds, then press and remove the solids before distillation, I'm confident that would be far more scalable/linear, as you are removing a huge variable from the process.

So, apart from some recent tests on a 1:4 multi-shot Gin in the 20 litre still, I only distill the strained liquids from a 72 hour maceration for my Gins, with some botanicals that go in the vapour path. This has been the case across all the still sizes, and even so, the recipes did not scale. This could be something as simple as quantity of botanicals in the vapour path x length of time in the alcohol vapour (3,000 litre still had 4.4kg of botanicals in the vapour path for 10 hours, where as the 200 litre still had about 300g in the vapour path for 8 hours). What went in the boiler of each was the same.

I personally would not want to press the botanicals that come out of maceration too much - I find it better just to leave them to drip dry. If you press them too much, you run more risk of cracking some of the elements that might give you bitter tastes, like the seeds inside Juniper, Cardamom, Star Anis etc. They are all fine to lightly-muddle, but if you crush them, I find they get bitter.

[NZChris]

You don't have to run a liter in 45 minutes, you can slow it down. Doing a 1:3 strength Bombay Sapphire style with my Carter Head, my last run was 1.3l and took over six hours.

[Saltbush Bill]

You don't have to run a liter in 45 minutes, you can slow it down. Doing a 1:3 strength Bombay Sapphire style with my Carter Head, my last run was 1.3l and took over six hours.

Chris what is your reasoning for taking 6 hours to produce 1.3L of gin ?.......does this include heating up to production Temp ?
If I charge my 20 L electric boiler with 4L of Gin Maceration , it takes about 45 Min from power on to finished.
Below is a short clip that shows the speed at which Gin leaves the still...........I do have a controller that I can use if I wanted......but at this point I see no reason to.

[NZChris]

The botanicals aren’t steeped and are not being boiled in the pot, they are in a Carter Head. If Bombay rushed their gins, I would too, but they don’t.

A 1.3l run with three times the botanicals makes over 3l of 45% finished product.

Warmup takes half an hour and isn’t counted in my distilling time as there is little contact with the botanicals during heating.

[NZChris]

I had a look at what I would need to do for a 1:25 in my smallest gin still, which is now 1.6l.

The Carter Head would have to hold 900g of loosely packed dry botanicals.
Flavors from the base spirit would be so insignificant that I could get away with using feints, maybe not rum feints, but sugar shine and whiskey feints would be fine.
No foreshot needed to get rid of acetone because the amount is so small. There might be much more in the finished gin from the diluting spirit, especially if you bought in NGS rather than making it yourself.

My 1:3 essences usually get diluted to 1:3.5 to 1:4, so a 1:25 run would make essence for at least 30 1l bottles worth of finished product. That will never happen in my shed.

[NZChris]

Using OEG recipe and others it seems you sacrifice about 30% of the alcohol you put in which is a reasonable amount and better avoided or reduced if possible

I always leave the still running and take off my Distiller's Treat. I let it run until the taste off the spout tells me it's not worth keeping. I use it for experimenting with fruit liqueurs. My current Distiller's Treat is from grapefruit gin and has pomegranate syrup and simple syrup added to get 35% ABV and 15g/100ml sugar, it's very tangy and yummy and has a slight louche. I've never let anyone else taste one, which is why I call it Distiller's Treat. I do the same when making multi-shot gins, diluting the Distiller's Treat with high quality neutral or a matching flavored spirit at the same ratio I use for the gin.

I did a rough calculation using notes from a recent run with Distiller's Treat taken and reckon that only about 3% of the initial ethanol went onto the garden.

If you are commercial, you could reflux it or clean it up with a pot still. Use what you've got.

[Tow Mater]

Hi All, sorry in advance if I missed a post on this somewhere I only found something a bit similar which was about making high concentration gin for lack of a better description. Using OEG recipe and others it seems you sacrifice about 30% of the alcohol you put in which is a reasonable amount and better avoided or reduced if possible. Does anybody double or triple the botanicals so you effectively get 2 or 3 times the strength then dilute back to the normal strength with neutral. This way the loss of alcohol is spread across multiple bottles worth. As always thanks for the opinions and experience.

Probably a good time to say this.
Apologies for your original thread direction getting totally derailed Tow Mater, but at the same time it's created a great bit of gin discussion, so thank you for asking it!

No probs at all. My question has really been answered by the multi shot description and getting much more from the additional discussion.

[Tow Mater]

Thanks NZ. I like the sound of the Distiller’s Treat.