The Big Gin Thread

crozdog

@richard the gin juice from the basket is piped back to the boiler I'm guessing.

Good luck cleaning. time for the caustic.

richard

@crozdog Yes. The ideal is rinsed after every run. For my CIP (circulated through sprayball in still as well as up and down through the column) I only use caustic, 2% and approx. 80 deg C followed by hot water flush. Works like a dream. Bear in mind that I don't have any fixed copper parts so this caustic is not an issue.

crozdog

Cheers Richard, as I thought, the only time i've seen stillage turn like that is when there's been some extra organic matter in it such as gin juice.

richard

:D

PÄÄ

Are there any general "rules" to make gincuts when macerate botanicals to the neutral 40 abv base. Or just collect all, without heads. There are much oils, so i cut about 40 ml per litre away. But then, just smell it or collect to some abv point.

TheMechWarrior

Cut based on what tastes good to you. There are enough people in the world to allow you to do this. Then all you need is to find the people that agree with you to sell your product to. You can only make so much product, so you should be good to rock n roll so long as you spend well on Marketing/socials/sales,

DonMateo

@PAA. @Themechwarrior is correct. It really depends on your botanicals. A while ago I switched juniper supplier and the difference in the amount of juniper oil was a lot, so if I wanted a lighter gin, ie with less juniper, I had to back off the Juniper and take a larger cut at teh front. Odin is one of the gods of online advice on how to cut Juniper and he recommends you take a cut. I normally take about 300ml out of a 20l batch. You want to just take the early very heavy juniper oils. There is no cut on the back end. You can take it down to 10% abv where its not worth distilling anymore. Around 20% abv you can get some funky flavors but the florals come out more between 20 to 10% so thats worth waiting for.

CothermanDistilling

In my honest opinion, if you are making 'cuts' on your gin run, you didn't start with a clean enough spirit...

DonMateo

@cotherman yes. I think the term cuts is the wrong word to apply. I think your just taking off the heavy juniper oils but only just a small amount.

richard

As mentioned above where it also depends on your botanicals, you will have different tastes coming through at different points of the run. In other words you have to find the acceptable tasting cut point which defines the start of take off and similarly the end of take off.

Once these taste points are established with associated temperature, you can in the future lock these temperature cut points for the specific recipe.

In the photo below I was using 20 beakers for heads into hearts smearing and similarly at end hearts into tails smearing. Very important to note is that the Gin is not determined by just one taste sample but rather by the combination of all acceptable taste samples that are considered worthy for addition.

PÄÄ

@CothermanDistilling said: In my honest opinion, if you are making 'cuts' on your gin run, you didn't start with a clean enough spirit...

Well, English is not my native language.

richard

@CothermanDistilling said: In my honest opinion, if you are making 'cuts' on your gin run, you didn't start with a clean enough spirit...

No this is not correct and is missing the point. Yes you ought have good quality Neutral spirit to start with. More importantly you are primarily cutting for the flavour profile that you desire from the recipe's botanical list. 50% of your flavour is found on the heads side, 20% in hearts and 30% in tails. A good gin is the ability to constantly harness the flavour

Smaug

Pretty sure @CothermanDistilling is talking more specifically about the rectification process prior to charging the final kettle charge.

CothermanDistilling

@Smaug said: Pretty sure CothermanDistilling is talking more specifically about the rectification process prior to charging the final kettle charge.

yes, and as a practical example, if you do a gin run with no botanicals and you get what would normally be considered to be heads or tails, you should start with better spirit. 90%+ of the craft gins did not start with clean enough spirit IMHO.

also, if you are using really high amounts of botanicals such as I have seen mentioned on other posts, such as 8g/L of orange peel, then you may need to do some sort of cut. I use .004-5g/L of bitter orange peel and .003g/l of sweet and I keep the entire run.

PÄÄ

@CothermanDistilling said: you should start with better spirit

Well, that was not the issue.

jbierling

I've reread this thread again, there is a lot of good information here, but in my opinion, there is nothing more confusing than people talking about grams per liter. Per liter of what??

So the consensus seems to be we're talking about liter of gin at its drinking proof, whatever that might be. How can this not be confusing to the average starting distiller? Are we talking about 40%, 50%, 45% or maybe 30%. Who knows.

In my opinion the way to go about this is as you would for a recipe for anything else you make. You start with a certain amount of alcohol and add in a certain amount of botanicals/herbs for that amount of alcohol. That's it. I use grams per proof gallon (I'm in the US).

I understand that given most people will end up with an amount of alcohol that closely matches the amount of input, and that most people are drinking 40-50% gin, maybe this is largely moot. Perhaps for a non standard gin, perhaps at 30%, basing your recipe on output might make sense since you'd probably want to increase the flavor, but am I missing anything else?

Who makes bread with a recipe based on loaves, rather than flour?

richard

@jbierling said: Who makes bread with a recipe based on loaves, rather than flour?

I second this. My method is g/l per diluted 30% of diluted neutral in the still. Some prefer 40% and that can be debated.

crozdog

I work on g/l of still charge volume at whatever %ABV the recipe calls for (typically 45%) eg 10g/l juniper in a 400l charge = 4000g Juniper

grim

Grams per liter at bottle proof gives an approximation of flavor intensity of the finished product, which is far more useful comparison than grams per (still charge metric) - since final dilution, distillation efficiency (out vs. in), will make a huge impact.

This is a comparative metric, not a recipe, though once you have a recipe, you could translate that into whatever you'd like really.

jbierling

All recipes are judged by what the finished product tastes like. And no matter what someone calls them, pretty everyone considers these recipes. The excellent Gin Basket Operation Manual calls them recipes too.

If a receipt is intended to be consumed at a particular proof, that should be part of the recipe.

grim

Oh, for sure.

DonMateo

I might be one of the few people who worked in a commercial bakery when I was a kid. They measure out kilos of whatever flour knowing they are going to make X number of loaves. I dont mind the grams per litre of final product calculation. Its the same same to me. Still I am a construction estimator by discipline so there are always more than one way to estimate what goes into anything.

grim

My wife always tells me. Cooking is art, baking is science. Getting creative when you bake can end up in disaster. Once your baking recipes are tuned, you do not vary. Also agrees, she works in weight for everything, never volume.

crozdog

g/l into still or g/l finished product, it doesn't really matter as long as you consistently use the same approach each time you run that "recipe"

Clickeral

Hey guys may be more for the commercial guys but does anyone have a recommendation on what to get to crack/crush juniper.

Recipe dev was done with a mortar and pestle, been using a grain mill and adjusting the gap for two passes however just looking at options as we are starting to do more volume

The guys did try a coffee, grinder/ blender (which I advised to be careful with) and obviously didn't get the results we had been looking for.

So keen for any guidance

punkin

Roller mill of some fashion i'd think.

Which grain mill did you try? 3 roller mill or two? What brand and spec?

I wouldn't think a hammer mill would be the go.

CothermanDistilling

3-roller is too much, a simple 2-roller grain cracking mill works great, but I would get a mill that had both rollers driven, and smooth for easy cleaning, at most it would have very hallow unidirectional grooves.

I just break the berry open, if the berries are fresh, they will gum up any other type when you try to make small pieces..

Clickeral

@punkin said: Roller mill of some fashion i'd think.

Which grain mill did you try? 3 roller mill or two? What brand and spec?

I wouldn't think a hammer mill would be the go.

Currently just one of the kegland cheapies

Malt Muncher - 2 Roller Grain Mill @ KegLand AU

Have heard a few people use Corona corn mills as well but thinking this is better for consistency

Homebrew

@Clickeral said: Hey guys may be more for the commercial guys but does anyone have a recommendation on what to get to crack/crush juniper.

2 roller mill.

I use one which is mains powered, much easily than the ones that you wind or connect an electric drill to.

Use it to squash open juniper, crack open coriander, etc.

grim

Yeah, I'd imagine the adjustable roller mill is going to be the most consistent way to do this.

Hammer mill would be a gummy mess for oily or moist botanicals. You'd be pulling screens out to scrape them down, scraping down the housings. No way. Not to mention that small hammer mills are very, very expensive.

One option I'll throw out here. A small commercial or metal residential meat grinder. Even the kind with the handle that grandma used to make meat balls. With a 4 blade cutter and smallest die (1/8 or so, maybe 1/16 if you don't have voluptuous juniper) on the end, you'd get a good level of consistency, be able to push the whole botanical bill through even. Low cost, easy to acquire, easy to use.