Tassel Gin #8

I spoke too soon when I wrote up Gin#7. The next day I found the fennel and cassia taste was little more pronounced than I thought. I still like it, though. This time I thought I'd try experimenting with the blending. The recipe was fairly similar, but I upped the cardamom, ginger, grains of paradise and restored the fennel to the previous level

Botanical	Last Time	This Time
Juniper	30g	30g
Coriander	12g	12g
Angelica	2g	2g
Cardamom	2g	3g
Lemon Peel	5g	5g
Orange Peel	5g	5g
Fennel	3.5g	4g
Peppercorns	2g	2g
Cassia	1g	1g
Ginger	1g	1.5g
Grains of Paradise	1g	1.5g

I started distilling mid afternoon, using a heat of 3 out of 6 on my hotplate to start with so as to give the aromatics a chance to infuse further during the heating and getting a slow drip of distillate. The first few jars were of 81% ABV.

The change in blending was to omit Jar 9 - 95ml @57% ABV which had a strong cassia taste. The plan is to save it and add to the still charge for the next gin distilling. I was left with 685ml @76.5%, to which I added 534 ml of filtered water to dilute it to 43% (export strength) as before. It tastes good....

[Update: Smooth and citrussy with a hint of cardamom and fennel, but only faint traces of cassia. Very tasty. Dawn prefers it to the Opihr I use as my baseline. I can see I may need to make some more before Christmas!]