Our first Gin

[dafeller]

I realize I'm standing on the shoulders of giants here, but we are very pleased with our first attempt at producing gin. The short history is, we've used Birdwatcher's sugar wash formula throughout, combining fresh Mauri Pinnacle baker's yeast with tomato paste as a nutrient. This has been a fool-proof recipe. I made about 45 litres of the wash, stripped them in our 15l copper pot still, and then divided those results in half, diluted to half strength, and then distilled a second time, making 300ml cuts. That worked fine for the first batch, but I got a bit confused on the cuts in the second batch, and so rather than combining the cuts of all-2d distilled material, I just threw them all back in together and distilled a third time. This was divided into cuts, and after heads and tails were removed, we diluted that material to 40% ABV and distilled it with a maceration of botanicals loosely based on one of the many recipes here on the list. So unintentionally quadruple-distilled; what could it hurt?

What came out was 2.8 litres of flavoured product. We tasted the first five of six cuts, diluted to 43% ABV and found none of them very interesting alone. Then did one combination of all of them and gosh, isn't that a surprisingly nice thing? The sixth cut was excluded from the tasting because it had quite a louche on it, which seemed the inverse of what people say regarding oil extraction, etc. It was the most aromatic of the cuts, though, so when I took the first five and started blending for a final product, I just added that in and the louche disappeared. What appeared was a new depth of flavour and a stronger juniper presence than we had in the first five cuts.

In head-to-head tasting our gin has come out very well with a panel of local 'experts'--okay, our neighbors who keep stopping in--and while not as dry as a Bombay or a Tanqueray, it is very drinkable and in spite of a higher alcohol level (it's at least 43% ABV, if not a bit higher; I don't know how accurate my hydrometer really is). It does develop a louche in tonic, but the next batch we will vapor-infuse the botanicals instead of macerating and see if we get rid of that.

Overall, a wonderful experience so far and one totally impossible without the fine people on this list. Thanks for sharing your expertise; it's not going to waste!