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Gin newbie


Firefighter777

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I made one batch of gin from a sugar wash and it turned out ok I guess, I used my 2" reflux still (bought from MileHi) and took the first 2 copper scrubs, and left out about 1/4 pound of the ceramic scrubbers out of the top, as to give me some room for a small bag of spices.

I didn't strip it first I ran the mash straight like you would to get some GNS, the gin though turned out light greenish/brown, perhaps from the ground cardamon spice. Is there any to avoid coloring in the gin? I really want to infuse it like the Bombay type.

Should I filter it through a wine filter? Will I lose some of the essences?

I just finished a mash of corn and sugar, and am planning to strip it first, and then run it through the same way, should I perhaps macerate the spices first add them to the wash?

Any advice would be appreciated.

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It's labor intensive, but if you're serious about nailing a gin recipe down, I'd recommend that you distill every botanical separately, at least initially.

Your plan to use low wines as the base for your gin makes it sound to me like you're going to end up with more of a genever style than a london dry style gin. If you want a london dry, I'd recommend that you distill your mash to neutrality (potentially with a carbon filtration) prior to adding botanicals for the gin distillation. And your gin distillation should be a simple, low reflux pot distillation for london dry.

In my experience, 24 hour macerations at 100 proof are pretty forgiving; you're more likely to run into problems with a vapor extraction like the one that you describe. Not to say that you shouldn't do a vapor extraction, but for recipe formulation you might want to use macerations as your starting point because less can go wrong.

The nice thing about separate distillations is that you really get to know your botanicals (and their cut points) individually, then you can blend them to get an idea of what they do collectively. At that point, you can mix them all together and distill them at once, if you'd like.

It does take a lot of time, but distillers spending obscene amounts of time on their gin recipes is not unheard of, and chances are that what you end up with will be better than "ok I guess" if you take the time to perfect your recipe.

My two cents anyway...

Have fun,

Nick

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You want your gin to be clear - no solid/colour should pass through into the finished spirit. Some suggestions might be not to grind up the botanicals up so much, or use a finer cheesecloth/muslin bag, or maybe run your still less aggressively?

I would also go very, very easy on the cardamom! It is strong.

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