Gin Assembly

Jean

Good morning all,

what is your opinion, for the creation of a Gin, on the distillation of each ingredient separately then to assemble the distillates then with different concentrations according to the desired flavor?

Thank you

richard

In my personal opinion, the only way to practically and quickly put together a gin recipe via a library of separate distilled botanicals.

People will have their own methods. But in my opinion, distilled / diluted to 40% or 43% ABV as required and suggested in the quaternary botanical mass ratios and where the total included botanical mass equation does not exceed a determined value.

It will take some time to prepare the above, but in the long run worth its weight in gold.

DonMateo

What I did was make up my recipes and then try them in 1 litre batches using heat cycling. Then after a couple of different variations, I did a 20l product run.

So to do the 1l system, you put all your ingredients in a 1 litre mason jar and add ethanol at 40% of just use good vodka if you dont have ethanol. Then you put somewhere where it will heat up and cool regularly. The top of my fridge was where I used. You can also put the jar in the fridge for 6 hours then put it out to warm up. Over the period of about 3 days you filter off the botanicals and try it. This will make a gin that is more heavy on the Juniper oils so its a good idea to lighten up on those. And there you have it. Simple process. The only problem is some of the lower percentage botanicals in a litre for example would be .5 of a gram it can be hard to make quantities that small. I know a couple of professional gin makers and they told me they do the same thing but in 4litre batches. Once you nail a recipe at 4 litres then its scalable.

crozdog

HI Jean, This is one of the methods I describe in the gin manual to dial in your recipe:

The StillDragon Operation Manuals

The gin you get by this method is known as a compounded gin, many gin purists aren't keen on compounded gins, instead preferring distilled gins e.g. through maceration & re-distillation or running through a gin basket (or combination of the 2).

Fiji_Spirits

I knew a guy who didn’t have the first clue about distilling or making gin and just started messing about with stuff and methods. He produced a pretty good gin eventually even tho his herbal loads were massively wasteful. He basically “did everything wrong” but still had a good product.

I did odins 3 ingredient simple gin and managed to produce a tasty end product with very efficient ingredient usage in only 5 test batches. It was tasty but unremarkable.

My advice? Have fun with it. Listen to the guys on methods then just spend some time at the lab still, messing around and enjoying the craft. Make something unique to your area. This is the best part of distilling.

The 4 liter thing @donmateo mentions seems legit. I plan on using that moving forward.

DonMateo

@fiji spirits I got the tip from these guys who run the largest craft gin operation in Buenos Aires. They make 12000l a month, or used to do before the pandemic. The really started making huge volumes when the offered it premixed with their own tonic in 50l beer barrels. They went from 500l a month in Bottles to 12000l in 50l beer kegs. And their unit cost went down as no glass and labels. Smart guys.