One-shot vs. concentrated gin / gin concentrate

[Pyrate]

Hey Guys,

I want to discuss a polarizing matter in the gin world:

Big gin distilleries and even so-called "craft" or "handmade" gin distilleries distill a concentrated gin that is later diluted and stretched with neutral spirit to a multiple. The pros are obviously that they have less work because they make much more gin out of one distillation compared to the "one-shot" way. I am still doing it the "one-shot" way and haven't dried the concentred gin method so far. That means I distill gin and the distillate is only diluted with water to bottling strength. Nothing else is added in my case.

In the EU both ways are treated the same. The concentrate-way is labeled "distilled gin" the one-shot-method also. Both distilled gins can be labeled "dry" if they contain no sugar and "London" if the botanicals are distilled together. So, the customer can't distinguish between the methods. I hope you get what I mean.

Now I have some questions:

1. Has anybody of you experience with the concentrate-method? Is it worse or same or maybe better from a quality point of view? Or does it depend on the actual recipe?
2. How do you translate a one-shot recipe into a concentrate-method? Simply multiplying the botanicals or is it more complicated?
3. How much can you concentrate? 5-times, 10-times, 100-times?
4. What's the exact dilution method? Do you dilute at bottling strength or at distilled strength with 96% GNS?
5. Do you have any other suggestions regarding this matter?

I am looking forward to an interesting discussion.

[glisade]

We develop all of our gin recipes as one-shot but then they all naturally become multi-shot. The reason is all our gins are developed on a 2 liter lab still, then we test it on our pre-production 60 liter still then to our 600 liter production still. The botanical amounts are scaled linearly but the heat up and distillation times take longer and longer as we move to bigger stills. The 2 liter still takes about an hour to make gin (20min to boil) but the 600 liter takes 5 hours (1.5 hours to boil). So the botanicals are sitting in the pot longer and the alcohol naturally extracts more flavors from them producing a much richer flavored gin. FYI, We load all the botanicals into the pot of the still to make our gin.

So we make multi-shot gins but it wasn't done originally on purpose, though I think it's a more practical approach. When we bottle the gin, I proof it to bottle proof then add GNS and water of the same proof to dilute it by 25%. I've never actually played around with purposely making a multi-shot gin or trying to make it more concentrate, so I'm no multi-shot expert.

[Silk City Distillers]

Did you guys see that video going around a few months back?

 

Brilliant brilliant video.

[glisade]

That's great and not surprising to me. Thanks for posting that video!

[Pyrate]

Thank you for the video, very interesting.

@glisade just to understand it right: you scaled your 2L still recipe linear to your 600L still and (you think) because of the longer heat up etc. in the 600L still you get a stronger flavored gin, right? Then you dilute the 600L gin distillate a bit (you make 100L to 125L) to get your original taste back, right?

I really want to dive deeper in this matter. In the video she makes a 25 times concentrated distillate which is a huge multiplier. But maybe here are guys that make a multi-shot on purpose?

[glisade]

1 hour ago, Pyrate said:

Thank you for the video, very interesting.

@glisade just to understand it right: you scaled your 2L still recipe linear to your 600L still and (you think) because of the longer heat up etc. in the 600L still you get a stronger flavored gin, right? Then you dilute the 600L gin distillate a bit (you make 100L to 125L) to get your original taste back, right?

I really want to dive deeper in this matter. In the video she makes a 25 times concentrated distillate which is a huge multiplier. But maybe here are guys that make a multi-shot on purpose?

Correct on all points.  The main reason I feel it was being concentrated on the 600L is when I would proof it to bottle strength the gin was louching so it tells me it's has a higher oil content than the 2L still batch. And of course the flavor was stronger than the original 2L batches. So instead of reducing the amount of botanicals on the large batch it made more sense to just dilute it.

[Pyrate]

@glisade so you diluted bit by bit until the taste was almost the same as the 2L recipe? Did you experience that some flavors/botanicals changed more with upscaling than others?

[glisade]

1 hour ago, Pyrate said:

@glisade so you diluted bit by bit until the taste was almost the same as the 2L recipe? Did you experience that some flavors/botanicals changed more with upscaling than others?

Yes. I made different diluted versions until I felt I found the correct flavor profile. I don't feel the flavors changed depending on the upscaling.

[Cosmic.Distiller]

I've done several different methods of concentrated vs one-shot (macerating botanicals for longer, adding more botanicals, etc) and I've definitely noticed a difference in flavor. Depending on the botanicals, the more oils extracted means a more range of flavors. Like capturing the full spectrum, which can be good or bad, depending (looking at you, lavender). I prefer one-shot. 

[Lokesh]

I recently proof gin, the strength of gin is 40% abv in bottle, during proofing down the gin did not louche but as during proofing process when the abv went below 48% it started louching, any suggestion how can I stop it? Will adding more Neutral spirit will work?  

[Cosmic.Distiller]

Hi Lokesh, 

Sounds like a botanical problem, imo. Chances are you have some oil heavy botanicals in there, and if you are macerating it for too long prior to distillation, that will be visible when you proof down. Try adjusting your recipe/SOP.