ethanol/botanical ratios when upscaling

[Spirited]

To date a lot of development work has been done using 700ml of vodka @ 37.5% abv in our pilot still. We are now shifting over to using GNS reduced with water so the charge will be 1 litre at 60% abv.

Given the increase in total volume of charge and increase of alcohol I will be looking to increase the quantity of botanicals.

Question is, should the botanical weight increase be in proportion to increase in total charge or increase in volume of alcohol only. My gut feeling is the latter as it is the alcohol we're ultimately re-condensing with all congeners.

Anyone have experience of this transition upwards in volume and abv. Feedback greatly appreciated.

Cheers All and Happy World Gin Day.

[JustAndy]

Seems like it would take about 4 hours and a liter of spirit to solve this question for yourself. Everyone makes their own gin differently.

[frh56dd]

Are you macerating botanicals? or doing vapor extraction? or both? or compounding your gin?

Each botanical does indeed increase proportionally to an increase in base spirit, but also in relation to time (how long the distillation run is), because how long a botanical is being heated/macerated/extracted etc will lead to how much flavor you get from it and what different flavors you achieve - its not just a question of amount (mass or volume).

e.g. if you double the base amount (mass or volume) you may double the juniper to get the correct result, but may only increase the rose by 30%. You may have to use 300% lavender.

The only way to know for sure is to use the full size still you intend to use, with a full size charge over and over till you achieve what you are aiming for.

Sorry cannot be more helpful - scaling up for Gin is not the same as scaling up for non-botanical distillates.

[rtshfd]

Thank you for the insight frh. We've done a piolet run at 300G of 40% and we ran into a scaling issue. The nutmeg destroyed our gin profile and the batch is a waste. I'm assuming there's no rerunning infused gin as a do-over so it would need to be destroyed, yes? Is there any way of recovering the batch? It's really bad and won't be used to blend with other batches.

[Skaalvenn]

Thank you for the insight frh. We've done a piolet run at 300G of 40% and we ran into a scaling issue. The nutmeg destroyed our gin profile and the batch is a waste. I'm assuming there's no rerunning infused gin as a do-over so it would need to be destroyed, yes? Is there any way of recovering the batch? It's really bad and won't be used to blend with other batches.

I have no idea if it would work but you could try running some through a heavy amount of carbon? Obviously the carbon would be junk afterwards, but it's cheaper than sending 300 gallons down the drain.

[StonesRyan]

Rtshfd, I'm nowhere near an expert but I'm wondering why you couldn't just rerun the bad batch for a do-over? Wouldn't that be just like a stripping run to strip the oils/ flavors after which you could attempt another spirit run with your adjusted botanicals?

As I said, I'm no expert. In fact, I'm finally doing my first gin spirit run on my big still today and the only thing keeping me sane is the idea of being able to rerun it if it's fouled. Hopefully someone with experience will chime in and clarify.

[rtshfd]

From my understanding, once the alcohol has picked up the aromatic oils from the botanicals, they're there to stay. You can probably carbon filter it out to temper the flavors, or redistill but I think it'll always be there to an extent.

[rtshfd]

From my understanding, once the alcohol has picked up the aromatic oils from the botanicals, they're there to stay. You can probably carbon filter it out to temper the flavors, or redistill but I think it'll always be there to an extent.

[ThreeBrothers]

If you have a column still, with enough plates you can get the flavors out.....