Tassel Gin #22

Today I distilled my first batch of gin for nearly a year. Read about my last one, in August 2024, here.

As that batch was so good, I decided to use the same recipe, although the actual amounts used varied slightly to account for my botanicals being less fresh.

Botanical	Gin #21	This Time
Juniper	30g	31.5g
Coriander	10g	11g
Angelica	1g	1.1g
Cardamom	1g	1g
Lemon Peel	8g	8.2g
Orange Peel	8g	8.5g
Fennel	2g	2.2g
Pink Peppercorns	3g	3.5g
Liquorice	0.5g	0.55g
Cassia	0.5	0.55g
Ginger	1g	1.1g
Grains of Paradise	1g	1.25g
Rose Petals	1g	1g
Elderflower	0.5g	0.5g

Here are a few photos.

All ready to weigh out my ingredients.

That's all the dry ingredients in my 1 litre Kilner jar.

Topped up with cheap vodka (at 37.5% ABV)

With a bit of a shake, some of the peel falls to the bottom.

That was left overnight and given a few more shakes.

Then today it was time to distil. You can see my base liquor has taken on a lot more colour. I am using just the alembic hood without the column this time. I wonder what difference it will make? Before starting I used my pipette to take a small sample and tasted it. Interestingly the taste was dominated by the coriander and it was quite sweet.

That all went in the still and I topped it up with more vodka to my capacity of about 1.8 litres.

This is my cooling reservoir with pump and tubing.

The idea is to get the flow just right so there's a steady trickle through the outflow but no more than it can take otherwise the cooling column overflows.

The flow back into the reservoir looks like this...

I turned on the heat and after about 20 minutes the first distillate came. Here it is dripping into the jar. The objective is to achieve a steady dripping and I adjusted the heat under the still to maintain that as I went.

Every 100ml or so I would swap out my collection jar for the next one and measure the volume and ABV of the contents. I also, with my pipette, take about 1ml and drip into a little glass and add the same amount of water and then note the taste. As the process went on the ABV, which started at 82% ABV slowly dropped over the first 7 jars to 72% and the taste progressed from sweet, aromatic and citrusy to mostly juniper and some darker notes from the cassia and liquorice.

This is the contents of Jar #9 - 88ml @54% ABV. The taste was mostly coriander, cassia and liquorice, but still some juniper.

I carried on collecting for a bit more but Jar #10 (68ml @ 35%) had too much dark flavours so I didn't use it. That left me with 9 jars totalling 847ml.

Now to the blending. I have a 1 litre bottle I use for this. Here is the result of combining the jars. Note that it totally clear.

After mixing, I took a sample and measured the alcoholic strength.

You may have to squint to see that it says just over 71 %. Meanwhile I had washed and drained my bottles, removing absinthe labels from a couple.

Now to dilute to a standard strength of 40% ABV. Using my dilution calculator, I worked out I need to add 655ml, which would get me to 1.5l total.

I have a jug for this.

Now to bottle.

I ended up with 1.45L in my 6 bottles with a bit left over for a taste test.

Looking through the bottles with the light behind you can see they are a bit hazy. This is due to some essential oils coming out of solution in the alcohol as it is diluted - in the same way that adding water to pastis makes it go cloudy. In the case of my gin I think it is mainly from the rose petals.

And here are my bottles labelled.

That will make a few presents. A good day or so's work then.

Oh... and the taste? Excellent. I compared it to some Gin#21 which I still had in the cupboard and it is very similar although the flavour is perhaps a little more intense. Maybe that's the difference from not using the column? Of course it will take a couple of weeks for the flavours to blend properly, so I'll have to try the comparison again then.