Jump to content

Percentage Gin Waste and other inquiries..


indyspirits

Recommended Posts

Our method is roughly this: macerate 40g various botanicals (juniper comprising 47% of total botanical load)  at 70% abv for 48 hours. Dilute to 40%. Charge still (we dont filter botanicals out).  For "heads cut" dilute some volume N by 1/2 with RO water. Once that stops louching start collecting "hearts".   We stop collecting when the distillate tastes earthy / "dry" / overly savory / unpleasant.  This invariably results in a VERY flavorful gin that lightly louches at bottle strength (46% for this expression).  We then add 46% neutral until is just stops louching and then bottle. This is a very dicey proposition as we all know the oils can come out of suspension if the temp drops.  

The volume we leave in the pot (the inconsistency really triggers my OCD) would make our finance guy's butthole pucker -- sometimes as much as 40% of the initial charge.   I ask you ginners this:  what volume are you leaving in the pot and what, if anything, are you doing about it?  Do you re-rectify in your big column?  Treat and send to waste?  Use it for the base of the next batch?  

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

indyspirits, how much botanicals do you use? 40g per liter or per US gallon? 40g/l would be too much, 30g-32g/l about the max. Heads cut <1% of boiler content, in fact I normally take around 0,5%. Total alcohol that ends up in the bottle is 90% of what I started with, I stop collecting hearts when what comes out of the still is at 45% ABV / 90proof. Bottled at 42% ABV / 84 proof, no problems with clouding. Lots of taste.

Question: is there a possibility that you just distill too fast, and therefor get too much smearing? I sometimes did...

  • Thumbs up 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/1/2018 at 2:44 PM, indyspirits said:

Our method is roughly this: macerate 40g various botanicals (juniper comprising 47% of total botanical load)  at 70% abv for 48 hours. Dilute to 40%. Charge still (we dont filter botanicals out).  For "heads cut" dilute some volume N by 1/2 with RO water. Once that stops louching start collecting "hearts".   We stop collecting when the distillate tastes earthy / "dry" / overly savory / unpleasant.  This invariably results in a VERY flavorful gin that lightly louches at bottle strength (46% for this expression).  We then add 46% neutral until is just stops louching and then bottle. This is a very dicey proposition as we all know the oils can come out of suspension if the temp drops.  

The volume we leave in the pot (the inconsistency really triggers my OCD) would make our finance guy's butthole pucker -- sometimes as much as 40% of the initial charge.   I ask you ginners this:  what volume are you leaving in the pot and what, if anything, are you doing about it?  Do you re-rectify in your big column?  Treat and send to waste?  Use it for the base of the next batch?  

 

re: louching:

If you are doing your 'demisting' test (aka where you add water to your distillate to see if it louches) to 40% abv before collecting into your hearts receiver you shouldn't have louching at 46% under any circumstance, unless you have some source of contamination that's not being mentioned. You can make your 'heads' collection smaller by using less citrus peel since that concentrates in the heads. Coriander is a good citrus booster that allows you to use less peel and hence have less N, D-limonene which is the culprit in most louching gins.

 

re: feints processing

If you have high rectification equipment you definitely should be reprocessing your feints to as close to neutral as you can and reincorporating that into your next batch's maceration. Even if you can't hit true neutral I would redistill my gin feints and keep what doesn't have the 'wet dog / barnyardy' taints for re use.

 

Depending on your equipment, If you can increase rectification on the fly you can get pretty good % yield by increasing rectification in stages as undesirable sensory characteristics present themselves. I usually get about 85-90% yield on a proof gallon basis by doing this.

 

  • Thumbs up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...