Fixatives / Citric Acid

[LaChascona]

I made a gin last week that did not have angelica or orris root. It came out nice but within a few days it had lost half of it's aroma and taste. 

I have read a bunch of stuff on this recently but haven't seen any thing about herbal substitutes to angelica or orris root. The only thing I came across was a distillery that was making liqueurs, was using Citric Acid as what seemed to be a fixative. 

My question is..... What are people using that don't have angelica or orris root in their list of botanicals? There are plenty of gins on the market that say they don't use angelica or orris root....... I've got more then a handful in my liquor cabinet that taste the same now as when I opened them months ago.... What's the deal? Citric Acid? Some other additive.   

[Silk City Distillers]

Citric is a mild antioxidant, so it might offer some protection against oxidation, but that is different from fixatives whose aim is to reduce volatility and slow evaporation of highly volatile aromas.

 

 

[McClintockDistilling]

We tried a few small batches with cranesbill root and chicory root as a fixative, but neither one of them had as good fixative properties as orris or angelica. You do get a great chocolate-coffee aroma with the chicory root but after 3-4 weeks we lost a lot of flavor. We ended up incorporating both in our recipe and added 100 grams of angelica as well and that seemed to do the trick.