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Starting out with a smaller still


needmorstuff

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You're talking about gin production, right? Quite a few UK based producers do so, ranging from nano distilleries running a 25L boiler to most of the big names. I don't, and there is growing resistance against this. But the rules certainly allow it. Oh and you need to be sure your NGS/GNS is flawless.

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Yes, Gin. I am personally against it, I would like to remain as "pure" as possible. I just wondered who did and didn't. My pressure is time, I am starting up and maintaining my day job, so i can only distill mainly on a weekend as I sometimes work away. 

I think i would stay with single shot and take it from there... I wish to make a premium product and two shot seems to move away form the artisan approach i want to take.

When you say NGS is flawless, being quite naive I assumed all NGS was equal? but syaing that the one I have approached (haymankimia) offers both NGS and Organic NGS, with the later being  slightly more expensive.

Do we have a list of "flawless" NGS suppliers? or what should i be asking them for? and indeed looking for.. a chem report?

 
 
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I bet he's saying you should look for something that tastes good because it would be going right into your bottle with the stuff you distilled and already know tastes good.  Otherwise you're just going to have to run that through something that cleans it up and then are losing the point of the shortcut.

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I would say buy a bigger but still affordable boiler. A 200L milk can boiler with 4" top port from China can be brought to the UK for less than a thousand UKP,  including transport and import duties.

Yes not all NGS is the same: different grains, different number of plates used... One of the stranger things I found out was that a particular one had trace amounts of particles in it, probably caused by carbon filtering and not running it through a very fine (think 0.2 micron) filter afterwards. If you dilute it to 40-45% ABV and let the bottles rest for a few months a haze at the bottom would appear. Now if you would have distilled this NGS with your botanicals it wouldn't be a problem at all.

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sounds like sticking to one shot is going to work best of all.

EUD - not quote sure what you are referring to.. the supplier of NGS didnt try sell me anything.. he just sent me a price list. It is me thinking Organic would be better. but in reality i guess it would be exactly the same as none organic - with the only benefit being from a marketing perspective.

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If you are taking the "artisan" approach then forget diluting with NGS after distilling.

Single shot only. Only add water to dilute.

And don't make the same assumption I made - that you can up the ABV in the boiler to 50% to increase yield.

30% to 35% max. Flavour profile will be rubbish at 50%.

And don't get greedy with the tails. You can always recycle the ethanol in the tails in a reflux still.

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mate you are right on the money!

I will only charge to 30%

only one shot

and I have already made the mistake during recipe development of getting greedy with tails!

This time around i ran nice and slow.. 2kw on a 50l still - coming off at 500ml every 8 minutes... the musky smelling tails didn't even rear their head, i did macerate the juniper and coriander this time though - made my tails cut at 96.6c - 34%

getting their.. just need to balance the bitterness now..

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