Tassel Gin#23

It being forecast to be rather wet yesterday, I planned on doing another batch of gin.

I started on Thursday by measuring out my botanicals and macerating them in some vodka overnight. The recipe was almost identical to my last one in July (see here), but with half the orange and lemon peel.

Botanical	Gin #22	This Time
Juniper	30g	30g
Coriander	10g	10g
Angelica	1g	1g
Cardamom	1g	1g
Lemon Peel	8g	4g
Orange Peel	8g	4g
Fennel	2g	2g
Pink Peppercorns	3g	3g
Liquorice	0.5g	0.5g
Cassia	0.5g	0.5g
Ginger	1g	1g
Grains of Paradise	1g	1g
Rose Petals	1g	1g
Elderflower	0.5g	0.5g

Yesterday afternoon I did the distilling. This time I included my column in the set-up. Here are a few photos...

My macerated botinicals and extra vodka to add.

There was quite a bit of colour from the lemon and orange peel.

All ready to start assembling. As I was using my column this time for the first time in a while, I decided to give everything a quick clean in the dishwasher first. The copper mesh goes inside the column.

Before starting, I sampled the starting liquor. It tasted promising.

I've not mentioned it before, but I always add a few glass beads to stop "bumping" and the liquid bubbling up out of the pot.

I top up with vodka to about 1.7l.

This is how the copper mesh fits in the column. Copper mesh is added to a gin still column to remove undesirable compounds and enhance flavor by creating a catalytic reaction, as well as to increase the final proof of the distillate through reflux. The large surface area of the mesh allows the copper to react with e.g. sulphur compounds, resulting in a cleaner-smelling and tasting spirit. The mesh also increases the efficiency of the distillation by creating a natural reflux action

The first thing to get going is the cooling. This is my reservoir and pump.

The idea is to get the water to pump into the cooling vessel at a rate that creates a little trickle of water circulating back into the reservoir. The coil inside is what the distilled vapour passes through and gets cooled to condense into distillate. You can see the hole the cooling water escapes though. The trick is get enough of a flow to replace the water that is heated with cool water from the reservoir, but not too much - set the pump too fast and the water overflows.

Here's my trickle going.

The still all assembled. You can see the PTFE tape that I used for the joints so I can get the still pieces apart again aafterwards.

The first drops are coming now.

After filling most of a jar I swap it out for the next one.

I take a few drops with my pipette and add a similar amount of water.

You can see it has gone cloudy from the essential oils from the rose petals.

The first bit tasted quite sweet and citrusy. As you can see, this jar was measured at 82% ABV. This is the same as last time when I didn't use the column.

Meanwhile the next jar is collecting.

I make notes of the amount, ABV% and taste of each jar as I go.

In all I used 7 jars collecting about 750ml of distillate.

I combined these in a bottle...

...mixed it all together and measured the overall ABV.

It was 71% ABV. I calculated I needed to add 585ml of filtered water to get to my target strength of 40% ABV. Did I get it right? It looks like it.

I ended up with these 4 bottles and a little bit spare to make a small gin and tonic for each of Dawn and myself.

It tastes pretty good. Less citrusy, of course, but also, I think a little smoother than last time. That will be the effect of the column, I think.

So today I printed out the labels and added them to the bottles.

Job done. It will be interesting to see how the flavour progresses after a few weeks. That's the Christmas Gin sorted!