How to work out multi shot gin recipe

[cumbriandistiller]

Hello Folks 

We have been running a micro distillery for a good while now and have now seen a large surge in orders due to some export orders. As most of you will be aware the more time I am in the distillery the less time I have to sell my products. Also I have been reading lots of blind testing  results on public's feedback regarding one shot Vs multi shot gins and they found that the results showed very little difference when done well. 

Therefore does anyone have some simple formulas/principles to work with to convert our current one shot recipe into a multi shot recipe. I will also need instructions on how to work out how much NGS I will need to blend with before adding water to bring it down to the desired ABV before bottling. 

I understand people may have differing opinions whether multi shot will give a similar quality product to single shot but that's not what I am debating today.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions 

    

[Silk City Distillers]

Base of it off of average botanical weight per finished bottle and work backwards from there to scale.  You'll need to adjust by taste based on your first trials.

Alcodens for the blending calculations.

Ultimately, you are extracting a specific amount of flavor compound into a specific amount of liquid.  If you have the same concentrations of the same flavors in the end-product, it's the same end-product.  There is no indication that any kind of reactive distillation is taking place in gin.

While people have noticed differences in scaling upwards - I think it's worth noting, the geometry of the still, baskets, vapor infusion - etc etc - these geometry differences likely play a major role - especially in the case of Carter head stills.  The botanical bill likely scales linearly here, however, the impact of geometry may not.  The other factor to consider, that complicates this, is time under heat if you are talking about maceration.  Increasing boiler abv typically means longer distillation times, meaning more time to degrade temperature sensitive botanicals in the mix.  If you run faster to compensate, you are also increasing vapor speed, which may impact vapor extraction (if you are using vapor extraction) - so see what I mean by the geometry?

[cumbriandistiller]

Thank you Silk Distillers, so I have a good idea now on how to work out my botanical ratios but I am still confused on how to work out how much NGS you use to blend with before adding water? Is there a general formula to use? I am thinking of doing a 1:5 ratio to start 

[JailBreak]

9 hours ago, cumbriandistiller said:

Thank you Silk Distillers, so I have a good idea now on how to work out my botanical ratios but I am still confused on how to work out how much NGS you use to blend with before adding water? Is there a general formula to use? I am thinking of doing a 1:5 ratio to start 

If you have a product already I heard a good way to dilute is to cut to proof then mix same proof NGS until desired flavor profile is matched.  For example, your single shot gin is 88 proof, distill the multi-shot, cut to proof then blend 88 proof NGS until it matches the flavor profile of your single shot. It's more trial and error but it would probably be the easiest.

[meerkat]

10 hours ago, JailBreak said:

 It's more trial and error but it would probably be the easiest.

All blending for flavor is by trial and error, but this excellent suggestion means that you are only trialing one variable (flavor) while the other variable (proof) is already solved.  Simple, but ingenious!

[cumbriandistiller]

On 10/24/2019 at 9:59 PM, JailBreak said:

If you have a product already I heard a good way to dilute is to cut to proof then mix same proof NGS until desired flavor profile is matched.  For example, your single shot gin is 88 proof, distill the multi-shot, cut to proof then blend 88 proof NGS until it matches the flavor profile of your single shot. It's more trial and error but it would probably be the easiest.

Jailbreak - thank you for this. That really helps and makes a lot of sense. As meerkat suggests in reduces all other variables. Will see how it goes. 
 

 

[spiritzzz]

On 10/26/2019 at 4:34 PM, cumbriandistiller said:

Jailbreak - thank you for this. That really helps and makes a lot of sense. As meerkat suggests in reduces all other variables. Will see how it goes. 
 

 

Have you made an progress with your multi-shot / concentrate method? would be great to learn any techniques you can share...
We are really small. So, to stay competitive, we need to maximize output on the smallest amount of equipment.

[cumbriandistiller]

Hello, 

so we haven’t made any huge leaps forward, but we did by accident double up the botanical ratio and added them to the boiler before realising. It distilled perfectly fine but with a much stronger flavour profile, as you would suspect. Therefore, we reduced some 96% NGS down to 42% which is our bottling strength for that particular product and added it 1kg at a time until we had our desired flavour that matched our single shot product. I was pleased to find that it pretty much doubled the amount of end product and I couldn’t personally tell the difference in flavour. It’s just imperative to let it rest for a good 3-5 weeks before bottling, so that the flavours come through, just as you would with a single shot gin. Otherwise it tastes very sharp on the tongue. I would imagine that the same principle would work if you tripled or even quadrupled the ratio, but like I say we haven’t taken it any further. That however, is mainly due to us not being bonded, so we have to pay the duty up front and our small distillery just doesn’t have the bank balance to have lots of NGS spare to both test this method properly and/or to have knocking around to reduce down to bottling strength. 
 

Hope this helps