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Gin Ultrasound Treatment

Stillbeginner101
edited September 2022 in Beginner's Talk

Hello,

I know ultrasound treatment has been discussed here a number of times already but those posts usually talk about brandy and whisky and only briefly touch upon ultrasound maturing of gin.

I have recently made a few small batches of gin and tried to treat them with ultrasound for 1 and then 2 hours and I must say that all the samples (untreated, treated for 1 hour and treated for 2 hours) tasted very differently. It seemed like the ultrasound brought forward the citrusy notes in my gin but unfortunately not always in a good way.

So I just want to ask if anyone has had any experience with it and some recommendations. I am fairly new to distilling and I feel like there is so much I still don´t know.

Thanks for any comments,

Yours sincerely,

Stillbeginner

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Comments

  • grim

    1. While we've established that ultrasound can have an impact on flavor (or perception of flavor), that impact isn't always positive. In some cases, blind taste testers will still prefer the untreated sample. I'd say my own experience is that it generally leans towards being beneficial, but it's far from being a universal, and you should never assume that to be the case.

    2. I very much believe the impact of ultrasound is a temporary phenomenon, and that's a belief that's based in my own experimentation and research. The impact is greatest immediately after treatment, and over time that treated sample will transition to being identical to the untreated sample. Not everyone shares my view, but I'm pretty firm in my opinion.

    As a beginner, don't waste your time or money here.

  • DonMateo
    edited September 2022

    I have done it a few times. Firstly you don't need to do it for more than 10 minutes. Think about it. An ultrasound bath is mixing your gin at 40,000 cycles a second. How much time do you need?

    I do agree with grim in that it is beneficial but the effect does pass. Or maybe that's just the natural aging effect of the gin as the flavors blend and mix. There was a lot of great experiments done on this on artisan distillers forum, which is no longer, and the expert said you don't need more than 10 mins. I followed those instructions and I would agree. I think you get a better benefit from whisky but there is a benefit with ultrasound. But its about the same as leaving it in a bottle for a month or two.

    The one thing I am certain of is when I pull out the ultrasound Bath my golden retriever Zeus, looks at my like i am a sadistic asshole and runs away.

  • Stillbeginner101

    First of all, thanks a lot for your comments, any insight is deeply appreciated especially at this point. I feel like there is still so much "basic" knowledge I still have to discover.

    Basically everyone says that the treated and untreated samples are similar after a certain period of time but isn´t that basically the goal of the treatment? To get to the same point as if you were to age the spirit for a long time but you just get to the final product after ten minutes of ultrasound treatment instead of weeks/months of aging. I am fortunately not wasting money on it just yet because thankfully we have ultrasound in my place of work :).

    I am sorry about your Zeus judging you this way DonMateo, he should be happy you´re making spirits at all. It might be that he is scared of the sound it makes though :).

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