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Gin botanical ratio - big louching and sulpher (sulfur)


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Morning (here in the UK anyway)

Last night we ran a 50% 40 litre gns/water charge through our 50 litre stilldragon pot still. Previous tests have only been in the region of 1 - 5 litres. We scaled our botanical content up proportionally to the volume of alcohol/water. This was left for 24 hours. The collected spirit on boiling had a shocking sulpherous nose but the flavour was along the lines of what we expected.

Intermittent cutting of the new make spirit revealed considerable louching throughout the run, which to me suggests the ratio of botanicals to alcohol is way to high. We're going to cut the nms with varying proportions of alcohol/water to see if we can determine the correct ratio. Our thinking is that if we add a volume of alcohol equal to that in the new make spirit and then cut to bottle strength...and loucing disappears, are we correct in assuming that our botanical level should be halved.

Is there a better way of doing this? What about the sulpherous aroma. Is this botanicals stewing? All feedback appreciated.

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Need more info. You described still as a pot still. Column? Dephlegmator? Did you run the previous tests in the same still (seems unlikely)? Are you getting any other indication of good fractionation on the run? Any copper in the still? What botanicals?

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Hi Bluestar

Its a still dragon 50 litre pot still. Single adjustable heating element 5.5kw max (typically run at 40% power once vapour started to come over). No plated column, just a simple riser with site glass into condenser and collection parrot. All stainless steel. Charge is 50% ABV (GNS and distilled water). Botanicals left in during boil as per smaller tests. Am going to reduce botanical levels to get rid of louching and may increase height of riser column to provide more head space. Flavour when cut is close to what we got on tests however despite big (too much levels) of juniper, we are not getting much juniper character. This might be overpowered by coffee cherry. Someone advised that proportional scaling of botanicals to charge does not work and that we should repeat the experiment but cut the botanical levels by 80%. I know sometimes, less can be more.

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If the test at 5 liters was done in the same still (not sure how that could be, though) it would not scale. If the test was done in a different still, it also might not scale. Makes little sense, however, that you would get not much juniper character but have too high a level of juniper, unless what you mean is that the other botanicals are dominating the flavor profile over the juniper, and you plan to reduce the other botanicals but keep the juniper at current level. Hard to tell, you have provided limited information, might help if you actually provided botanical bill.

But in any case, it also sounds like you might not be getting enough fractionation to make a useful cut.

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When creating a gin recipe we started with 2x more juniper than any other bot and adjusted from there.  In a 30 gallon run of 53/47 neutral/water we pulled off a liter or two (dont have notes in front of me) before distillate diluted to approx 70% stopped louching. The general rule of thumb has held well for us.  Gin recipes are a real bitch to scale and that not to mention the difficulties with batch to batch inconsistencies of botanicals.

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As mentioned, gin recipes do not scale linearly.  Creating a gin recipe is a very iterative process.  After each pilot distillation, adjust one or two, at most, botanical portions (we measure everything by weight) otherwise you might not be able to figure out what has changed.  As you do this you'll narrow in on your profile.  If you're lucky you can then calculate the average botanical usage for the last N batches and try using those proportions as your final recipe.  If it works then you don't have to sewer those last N batches.

Also, as mentioned, botanicals change crop to crop; even dramatically from the same source.  We started out with Juniper berries from Albany but then they had a bad year and our vendor switched to Italy.  They were horrible.  Found some comparable berries from Croatia and are now using them.  Buy as many batches worth you can afford and store.  As the crop to crop and even batch to batch profile varies incredibly.  Some of the big gin manufacturers buy 3 years worth at a time.

We also employ the trick of not bottling per run.  We'll do 5 or 6 distillations (about 550 bottles each), blend them and bottle half.  Then we'll do a few more distillations and add to what we didn't bottle.  It's hard to be consistent when you are small.

Good luck.   

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We've now cut back hugely on all botanicals and have switched to removing botanicals from the charge prior to boiling. Managing to retain profile of test batches but are still getting an odd aroma. This aroma actually drops out on dilution, something we have tested on product straight from the still as well as the disastrous run from 6 days ago. Anyone else experiencing huge variations between their NMS and rested/proofed spirit. I know it changes but this really is quite something.

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