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What is the way to duplicate a Gin Recipe using Gin Basket?

edited August 2017 in Recipes

Hi friends, I am trying to duplicate my gin recipe with GB, before that I need a starting point. I'm afraid this will not be as simple as doubling alcohol, doubling botanicals and sitting down to pick up an identical gin. Any advice? Thank you

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Comments

  • i have developed a spreadsheet that works on grams of each ingredient per litre. I then put in how many litres and get the number of grams of each botanical needed.

    so yes I double the botanicals if I double the alcohol

  • @crozdog said: i have developed a spreadsheet that works on grams of each ingredient per litre. I then put in how many litres and get the number of grams of each botanical needed.

    so yes I double the botanicals if I double the alcohol

    I don't think it's that easy, he is trying to change his recipe from another process (maceration, boiler infusion?) to vapour infusion. I encourage my competitors to do just that :))

  • Maybe I expressed myself wrong. I have a recipe defined by vapor infusion and I want to collect double the final product. My original idea is to double the volume of pure alcohol in boiler and double the amount of botanic but it seems to me that it should not be as simple as this. Thank you

  • Sorry I misunderstood you!

  • @squeakyclean The problem is google translator ..... You seem to have some experience in these cases, any advice? Thank you

  • Sorry can't help you, I'm a big fan of boiler infusion which can be used to create bold gins with a complex flavour. Luckily there are many people on this forum who have experience with vapour infusion and carter heads.

  • Share the complete recipe

  • i stand by my original response….

  • You did well to pick it Croz, i was with squeaky.

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  • I agree with squeaky that going from another process to vapour infusion is not easy & will take a bit of trial & error

  • edited August 2017

    My understanding is that he is vapour infusing and wants to continue to do so. Just more. His problem is that a GB4 will only hold max 460 gms of botanicals which I have found is good for about say 20 litres of finished product. That is by my method of dilution down to 20% and finishing when my average finished product is around 46% so no watering down. After this there is little flavour coming thru so botanicals are spent.

    I have tried the changing basket trick half way thru but don't like that idea as nearly impossible to replicate due to the different flavour profiles coming across at different abv concentrations. If @XEIP wanted to start at a higher still abv I don't think you would get more final product. The GB4 seems about right For 45 l at 20% finishing around 18 l of bottle strength.

    If you want more then I suggest you will need a bigger basket but hard to say because we don't know what @XEIP is doing at the moment and how much he is after. The limitations are the quantity the GB4 holds. Having said that I actually put 100 gms of juniper in my column as well as I was after a bit more juniper whack. Lots are possible you just have to develop a process with what you got and what you want. Ie possible to put the juniper in boiler and other botanicals in GB4 which would make much more quantity possible.

  • edited August 2017

    I do like @punkin new floor mounted gin basket though I don't need any more quantity - but it is nice. The smaller quantity is good as you can fiddle and develop recipe without drowning in product.

    Dream on about nice shiny stuff.

  • I bought two GB4s for volume and I figured out you can just put the second one on the top of the first one and you have double the capacity. Modularisation is cool.

  • edited August 2017

    Good call Don. That certainly is another way to skin the cat. You also gotta remember in my case I am working with really pure neutral so no cuts and a gin run only takes a couple of hours and could go straight in with another run if wanted too.

    Don if your basket is a little loose in the GB4 what I did was to strip out a length of copper electrical cable and untwist then wrap 6 or so turns around the top and near bottom of basket. Just poke the wire into the basket holes and fold back inside it holds well and makes a neat sliding fit.

  • edited August 2017

    @GD50. Thanks mate. To be honest I havent started the thing up yet. In 10 days time I light it up and start trying my recipes. But I am just getting started. Thanks for the advice on the basket and wire. I was toing to roll up some teflon tape and run it around in circles then tie it off.

  • @DonMateo said: I bought two GB4s for volume and I figured out you can just put the second one on the top of the first one and you have double the capacity. Modularisation is cool.

    Top idea. you can also put a straight spool (or spools) in between the 2 GB4's with a port on each GB4 blocked off to create a much bigger basket. You'd fit a lot of botanicals into a 510mm long spool & only really need the basket in the bottom GB4!!

  • @crozdog. Yep I figured with the two GB4,s one on top of the other I can charge my 150l gin still with 100l to produce about 40 to 50l of bottle strength gin. I want to try my recipes with one and when I need production add the second one. A 200mm section of 4" pipe inbetween the first and the second GB section will get me to 150l of boiler capacity and 75 bottles of production straight from the still. I really like the idea of wrapping cable around the basket. Although theoretically speaking you only have to seal the bottom basket and all the vapor will be heading North. Since I am in the middle of nowhere, so to speak I am having to improvise on many things. I start trying recipes next week.

    Nice to contribute something to the board.

  • edited August 2017

    @DonMateo I did not do it the way i said - See picture . The logic of why it did it that way escapes me at the moment but it works. And you can make up for any size gap by the dia of the wire you use.

    image

    image.jpg
    600 x 800 - 75K
  • @GD50. Great mate. Thanks.

  • As @GD50 says I do not explain what I'm doing. I use 50 liters to 25% and 450 gr of botanical elements in my basket and I get about 20 liters bottle strength. Is it as easy as using 100 liters to 25% and 900 gr of botanical elements to have 40 liters of bottle strength with the same flavor? This is really the question I should have asked. Thank you

  • My commercial small batch production method for vapor infusing that exceeds the GB4 limit is to put a 4x20 pipe below it, a 4" filterdisc and special gasket at the bottom, and a reducer(or pipe) below that and above the kettle(aids in removing and carrying to the trash after use) .

    I warm the still up and take a few ml of product and discard, then quickly power-off, open the gb and use a funnel to pour in a kilo of botanicals, close up and power on wide open 5500W, and reduce to 70% after collection starts.. I get minimal dripping this way, ant I get repeatable results... 24-28L of ~125 proof

    I did try an 8" perf plate with 1 kilo, but I do not think I got the same extraction, I think you want at least 2x higher than the diameter to keep it from vapor channeling... with a 60L boiler and 20L of 190proof, I add 40 liters of water.. I have to dilute with another 8-12 liters of water when done, which I would like to avoid, but not worth reducing size of batch to three bottled cases instead of 4 to do it...

    I plan on going larger. 8"x20" TC tube (2x the diameter is 4x the volume) on my 380L SD still, so 4 kilo of botanicals and 80L of 190.. probably have to add 3 parts water instead of 2 to get bottling proof off the still, so 240L of water, totaling 320L, and hopefully getting 160L of 87 proof..

  • @XEIP yes I think you will be close to just double everything -at a guess. The question is how are you going to hold the 900 gms of botanicals. @DonMateo has one idea and you can put a spool in like @crozdog said and really increase your holding capacity a lot more. A bit expensive but a good idea all the same. Another way would be to put your juniper in the boiler along with the woody herbs but that is a new path which would take some time to work out.

    So the question now is how you going to hold 900 gms of goodies. Your original results are very similar to my own which is good to see.

    Or do as I said and run a second brew straight after first. My gin run is really quick so easy to do two in a day.

  • Why not do multiple passes based on type of botanical and blend the final result? This would allow you to control for variation in botanical qualities and oil percentages. While it's more work to do multiple runs, you at least get to control another variable that didn't exist previously.

  • edited August 2017

    Good info @CothermanDistilling. Not quite sure why you bother with the first few ml bit but they are all just processes that we do. It is so easy to get exactly the bottle strength off the still that you want with a few calculations but I am not after quantity and you are developing. All good.

    I probably run a bit quicker than you with by memory 6700w on my pot still config. Might try a bit slower but it works so what the heck. The idea of the fast vapour appeals to me and chewing on the botanicals at the end and they seem mostly done.

  • @grim because you have to back yourself doing that and that could be scarie to a newbie.

    If I was going to do that I would have a major play with my glass still to skill develop.

  • regarding the first few ml come out.... It will help clean anything undesirable out of the freshly assembled, or weeks stored system with condensate in it.. you also have high reflux by all the cool metal, so that first few ml will be crappier than the rest, even if that crappiness was undetectable in 20L.. it is in the first few ml... and it lets me know the still is nice and hot and won't drip a bunch of botanical juice back down into the pot..

  • @CothermanDistilling said: My commercial small batch production method for vapor infusing that exceeds the GB4 limit is to put a 4x20 pipe below it, a 4" filterdisc and special gasket at the bottom, and a reducer(or pipe) below that and above the kettle(aids in removing and carrying to the trash after use) .

    I havn't had my first coffee yet & am trying to picture this setup, but having trouble. Could you post a pic or a rough drawing?

  • edited August 2017

    Same here as I can't quite picture it. And good point re the still clean up but I still dump to first few ml anyway so I guess I am doing the same

  • @GD50 said: The smaller quantity is good as you can fiddle and develop recipe without drowning in product.

    You can always redistill your mistakes.

    This is how I discovered doing two infusion runs. I had a shitload of juniper stock solution that I made for blending experiments. I decided to use it for my base spirit on an all-in-one run once I got my gin basket botanical blend dialed in. Damned if it didn't make a better tasting finished gin than just using unflavored base spirit. Now I do a juniper infusion run on my base spirit, then send it back through for an all-in-one infusion run.

    Also, don't be too quick to shut your infusion run down. There are flavors that come off late that add complexity to your gin. Try collecting some late stuff separately, and then do some blending experiments with it. I find It adds some pleasant earthiness.

    I'm more like I am now than I was before.

  • @Kapea. Great advice mate. Thanks.

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