T500 and botanicals basket — some questions

[mixvio]

Hi everyone, new here but I have found this forum helpful as a lurker as I have been playing around with my still. I have recently purchased the Still Spirits Botanicals Basket for my T500 and I'm a little confused by the instructions for the vapour infusion instructions and I was hoping someone might be able to clarify it for me.

I have a ~93% spirit that I diluted and filtered down to about ~43%. The instructions say to set the still up using the water distillation method (from what I have gathered it's because using the still in the usual distillation method will strip the neutral spirit from the botanicals instead of infusing it?) but then I am confused about the last bit of the instructions:

6. Collect all the spirit into a 5 L (1.5 US Gal) demijohn. Stop collecting when the spirit reaches 20% ABV.

7. Water down to 40% ABV and leave to settle before consumption.

The 43% diluted spirit is 7.5l, and I have to add enough water to get it to 10l for the still. I'm very confused about "stop when it reaches 20% ABV" but then "water down to 40%" since that seems flipped around; if I stop infusing at 20% I have halved the alcohol strength of what I put in. Or is it saying I top up the 20% ABV with enough neutral un-infused spirit to get it back up to 40%? The wording of this has me very confused so I would appreciate some advice from people who have use it.

Also if I'm putting in 10l (7.5l at 43% and then another 2.5l of regular water) how much should I be getting out after the final infusion? I'm assuming I'm not getting that full 7.5l back but what should I expect to recover?

Thanks so much!

[howard]

i think those instructions sound stupid and misleading.
i don't have a t500, and there are folk who might direct you better.
have a good read of odins easy gin to get your head around things.
it's your choice whether to infuse or macerate.
collecting the product in a single receptacle until it's 20% will get you a bad tasting gin IMHO.
7.5l of 43% will get you about 3L of gin at around 75-80%ABV (using the 400ml/litre method)
then you can dilute the 3L down to 40%, which will give you about 6L to bottle.

OEG method gets you to only collect 400ml per litre (7.5l x 400ml = 3litre)
around the 3l mark (sometimes before or after), the product will start to have woody and grassy off flavours.
when you are starting your gin journey, it's probably best to collect in small jars, so you can taste and smell the difference in flavours throughout the run, (but especially near the 400ml/litre mark)

[mixvio]

Thanks for that, though I'm more confused now than before. :teasing-tease: Is there a recipe for Odin's anywhere? I find it mentioned in the forum often but the search wasn't turning up the actual recipe. I googled some stuff but not sure if that's the same thing you're referring to.

I'm confused about the higher ABV, the steps the instructions go through tell you to bypass the reflux coil entirely so I'm not sure how the ABV would get concentrated again? But then again I'm deeply confused by the "until it's 20 to 30% ABV" as well.

All of the guides and videos I've seen only go up to the point where you've screwed the basket on and are starting the run and then they just stop there with no further explanation of the process, so I'm very bewildered.

[howard]

don't worry, we all started out bewildered :)) .
when you distill the 43% in potstill mode, the product will start around 88-90%.
after collecting 400ml per litre of product, you will end up with an average of about 78-80%.
i discard the rest, including the first 10ml of the run.
if you collect down to 20%, the resulting gin will be bad. imho.
you do not reflux the 43%, so that bit is correct.

[mixvio]

when you distill the 43% in potstill mode, the product will start around 88-90%.
after collecting 400ml per litre of product, you will end up with an average of about 78-80%.

Thanks for your responses so far. I'm still not understanding this bit so I'm not sure if it's confusion on my end or us talking about different devices, my apologies.

I have 7.5L of filtered neutral spirit at 43% ABV. The directions for the basket recommend a minimum of 6L spirit, and the still itself requires a minimum of 10L liquid to run at all. So if I use all 7.5L of spirit I'm diluting it further with 2.5L of water — I don't understand how this starts at 88-90% in that case? I would assume the ABV would be even less than 43% since I've added more water.

The instructions say to set the still up in "water distillation mode," which apparently bypasses the reflux. Given that I'm still running cooling water through the system I assume whatever's in the boiler is getting diluted in some way or another but the last two bits of the instruction manual don't make any sense to me.

The T500 isn't an alembic still/dome if that makes any difference to the process?

[mixvio]

Just a followup since I went ahead and did the infusion run. Given that I can't find any info about this specific scenario hopefully this helps anyone else. This might be basic info to most people but it was brand new to me.

I filled the botanicals basket with my selected ingredients (and I do mean filled, I blitzed up everything in a grindr and packed it loosely to the top of the basket itself — next time I'll give it a try without grinding everything together and see what happens just to see if I notice a difference). I put my 7.5L of filtered 43% spirit in the boiler and topped it up with water to get to 10L and set the system up as per instructions to run the botanicals distillation. It took about ~20 minutes or so for the water to come up to a boil and start dispensing from the white tube.

To err on the safe side I set up a conveyor belt of containers — I took the first ~20ml in one small one, and then cut it every ~250ml. I reasoned that I was going to get about 4000ml or so if it was around 80% ABV and true enough right about that point was when the distillate started looking demonstrably cloudier than the rest of the batch. I stopped the boiler at that point and let things cool down.

I wasn't expecting the distillate to come out so quickly — the instruction manual says distilling 20L of water takes eight hours, I don't know if infusing botanicals works faster or something but I was probably finished in an hour, which included the lower rate of distillation as I got closer to that 4000ml mark. I also wasn't expecting the distillate to be very hot, and it was, so be on the look out for both of those things if you weren't expecting it like I was.

The distillate was too hot to properly test the ABV but I could definitely smell the botanicals throughout the distillation process which was a hopeful sign. Once all the containers had cooled down to room temperature I started getting ready to see how much I needed to combine. In the end I did end up tossing the first 20ml (it smelled terrible and I didn't even want to risk tasting it) and the last ~600ml or so. Everything in between smelled and tasted nice enough to have me be cautiously optimistic, and in the end I was left with about 3300ml that came out to around 70% ABV. I diluted this down to 43% again, ending up with about 5600ml all up which gave me eight 700ml bottles of "final" gin.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to leave it sitting for a matter of hours or days but I left it alone for a couple of hours and was too impatient to see whether or not it worked out. Even with basic Coles-brand tonic water it tastes just like a gin and tonic, the juniper DEFINITELY came through no question, and it tastes lovely. Up until now I was just using the flavouring syrups because getting my hands on the botanicals basket proved difficult (and it hadn't occurred to me that I could make my own with cheesecloth) and the gin properly infused with botanicals is a billion times better than the artificial-esque flavouring from the syrup (obviously, I knew it was going to be, but I was admittedly not prepared to be as happy with this on my first try as I am).

The instructions for the basket are confusing — I kept getting caught up on the fact that it doesn't say that the alcohol you're putting into the boiler at the start of the infusion is going to come out significantly higher in ABV than it was going in, so that was where I wasn't sure what to do to ensure I was getting a drinkable final output.

Anyway thanks for your help Howard, I wouldn't have made the intuitive leap without your feedback!

[oddian]

I'm pretty new here and to be fair I don't own a T500 but I'll share how I do my gin as it's a little different.

Firstly I produce a nice pure clean spirit. 1 pot still stripping run and then a reflux run slow and neat. I use a pure oat wash with enzymes from Angel Yellow, it's my favorite. Once you have a clean spirit you're not going to magically create more methanol.

I basket my botanicals. You don't need to grind the down, just make sure the seeds are split open. A few seconds in a moartar and pestle does the trick. For running 800ml output I'll put in 12g Juniper, 8g Corriander, 3g Orris Root, 3g Angelica and a lemon rind cutting. Masceration tends to take more to infuse and it takes longer and IMO vapor infusion tastes better.

I cut my spirit down to 40%, take 100ml more than I need and dump that into my boiler (I use an air still with a basket for gin, it's all I use it for now). Add the botanicals to the basket and run it. I take everything that comes off until it loses depth of flavour and alcohol. Results in abnout 600ml of 60% or so and the remaining wash in the boiler is almost just water. Dilute back to 40% and it makes about 800ml nearly every time and the resulting Gin is pretty great if I do say so myself.

Adding water to your gin isn't necessary when you run it unless you need to dilute down to 40% or make the minimum volume of your boiler. As long as your 40% or below when it goes in for safety, your basket is in the vapour path and you run it slow it should work a treat.

[howard]

I filled the botanicals basket with my selected ingredients (and I do mean filled, I blitzed up everything in a grindr and packed it loosely to the top of the basket itself — next time I'll give it a try without grinding everything together and see what happens just to see if I notice a difference). I put my 7.5L of filtered 43% spirit in the boiler and topped it up with water to get to 10L and set the system up as per instructions to run the botanicals distillation. It took about ~20 minutes or so for the water to come up to a boil and start dispensing from the white tube.

sounds like a bit of a win so far.
i still don't follow the t500 instructions.
has it got concealed Ultra Low Watt Density (ULWD) heating elements?
i think that buying a voltage controller would be a good start (for sale on the '5-star store', link is top left hand corner )
concealed elements generally mean that you can run very small runs (eg 3/4 litres in my brewzilla)
by diluting your 7.5L up to 10L you reduced the ABV of your run to about 33%, which is not a disaster, but it will make a different tasting gin.
i cannot see the logic in their insistence on a 10L minimum.

for me, i would run the 7.5L of 43%
i would collect the first 10ml, that contains a lot of oils (?) that will cloud the final product.
then i would collect 3 litres ( 7.5L x 400ml = 3000ml)
just before and after the 3 litre mark, i would collect in small 20/30ml, and decide which to include/exclude.
for me on a 43%abv run, the average ABV of the final 3L would be about 80%abv, which i would dilute to 6L of 40%.
folk reckon that gins take about 5 weeks to settle down.

there is a lot more to consider and learn, like going down the masceration path, as opposed to infusion method.
i'm in the maceration camp and have a small 5L still, dedicated to gin.

[Boardy62]

I have been making gin in the t500 for several years i only use a max of 40 percent abv in a run the botanicals are placed in a basket attached with copper wire under the column in the boiler , i bag the ground spices together and the orest go in together in the basket as juniper is a fair quantity i throw the excess straight into the boiler this makes a great gin fairly simply i hope this helps. note the still is setup as normal no changes to column packing or anything just run normally but as slow as possible the different flavours come across at different times through the run they get all mixed together at the end for a great tasting gin!

Hi everyone, new here but I have found this forum helpful as a lurker as I have been playing around with my still. I have recently purchased the Still Spirits Botanicals Basket for my T500 and I'm a little confused by the instructions for the vapour infusion instructions and I was hoping someone might be able to clarify it for me.

I have a ~93% spirit that I diluted and filtered down to about ~43%. The instructions say to set the still up using the water distillation method (from what I have gathered it's because using the still in the usual distillation method will strip the neutral spirit from the botanicals instead of infusing it?) but then I am confused about the last bit of the instructions:
as a

6. Collect all the spirit into a 5 L (1.5 US Gal) demijohn. Stop collecting when the spirit reaches 20% ABV.

7. Water down to 40% ABV and leave to settle before consumption.

The 43% diluted spirit is 7.5l, and I have to add enough water to get it to 10l for the still. I'm very confused about "stop when it reaches 20% ABV" but then "water down to 40%" since that seems flipped around; if I stop infusing at 20% I have halved the alcohol strength of what I put in. Or is it saying I top up the 20% ABV with enough neutral un-infused spirit to get it back up to 40%? The wording of this has me very confused so I would appreciate some advice from people who have use it.

Also if I'm putting in 10l (7.5l at 43% and then another 2.5l of regular water) how much should I be getting out after the final infusion? I'm assuming I'm not getting that full 7.5l back but what should I expect to recover?

Thanks so much!

[The Stig]

This is what I did/do for gin
viewtopic.php?f=85&t=13739