Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

the trick with drying roses is to not over dry them... a bit like cigars...store at about 60 - 65 % humidity after drying... we dry in a domestic dehydrator.
Doc

I use the same Doc, from memory set to 140F or 60oC for roughly 8hrs+. And that makes most things brittle dry.
To dry to just 60-65% I'd hazard a guess you'd be drying for 4hrs or less?

Ran this recipe yesterday - fantastic result and my first run through the Carter Head. However, when I diluted the product this morning it has a hint of cloudiness about it. What am I doing wrong?

Cheers,

Fish

I've made a few batches and occasionally it goes cloudy.....then a couple of hours later, it's clear again....stick it in the fridge and it goes cloudy.....sod if I know, but still tastes fantastic.

Fishws wrote:Ran this recipe yesterday - fantastic result and my first run through the Carter Head. However, when I diluted the product this morning it has a hint of cloudiness about it. What am I doing wrong?

Cheers,

Fish

Nothing.

You have heaps of botanical oils in your gin.
You could dilute it with neutral to stop it from louching.

Your Carter Head is working very well. :handgestures-thumbupleft:
I just leave mine go cloudy when diluting it, doesn't hurt it.
It's just an excess of oils.

dogbreath vodka wrote:

Fishws wrote:Ran this recipe yesterday - fantastic result and my first run through the Carter Head. However, when I diluted the product this morning it has a hint of cloudiness about it. What am I doing wrong?

Cheers,

Fish

Nothing.

You have heaps of botanical oils in your gin.
You could dilute it with neutral to stop it from louching.

Your Carter Head is working very well. :handgestures-thumbupleft:
I just leave mine go cloudy when diluting it, doesn't hurt it.
It's just an excess of oils.

Thanks DB, the result is great, really easy drinking, so I won't buggierise around with it any further. Also, I crushed a cardamom pod in with each batch of botanicals. I loved running the Carter Head - it's a great bit of kit.

Hi one and all :),
Has any one done this recipe with a pot still? I have a 4" modular pot still and was thinking about doing either a TPW wash or a weetbix wash to get low wines, then when I have enough do a spirit run. Once that is done put the botanicals in a hops bag or something similar and using the hearts from the spirit run to make the gin. Do you think that this will work?

Regards,
Nino

Nino wrote:Hi one and all :),
Has any one done this recipe with a pot still? I have a 4" modular pot still and was thinking about doing either a TPW wash or a weetbix wash to get low wines, then when I have enough do a spirit run. Once that is done put the botanicals in a hops bag or something similar and using the hearts from the spirit run to make the gin. Do you think that this will work?

Regards,
Nino

It will. it will work very well indeed, just let it sit in the hearts for a minimum of 1 week.
its how I make ALL my gin. I always up the corriander and juniper content myself as these flavours dont seem to come through as well by steeping....

Darwin award wrote:

Nino wrote:Hi one and all :),
Has any one done this recipe with a pot still? I have a 4" modular pot still and was thinking about doing either a TPW wash or a weetbix wash to get low wines, then when I have enough do a spirit run. Once that is done put the botanicals in a hops bag or something similar and using the hearts from the spirit run to make the gin. Do you think that this will work?

Regards,
Nino

It will. it will work very well indeed, just let it sit in the hearts for a minimum of 1 week.
its how I make ALL my gin. I always up the corriander and juniper content myself as these flavours dont seem to come through as well by steeping....

Thanks for that DA but I was thinking of doing a third distillation with the botanicals in the vapour path, I have added a 4" by 100mm pipe in the middle of my modular still with a copper plate in the bottom of it so i could put the botanicals in there.

Although steeping might also be the way to go as well.
Thanks DA :handgestures-thumbupleft:

As long as you use good hearts cuts and good pure water and then collect all of the distillate should get what your after.
Only reason to take cuts on your "gin" run would be so that you could try and isolate the flavours for later blending.

I have now put two runs of this recipe through my FSD 4 plates with gin caddy.

The first go I had the last decent jar of my saved cuts a touch milky. I thought to myself it will be fine and once all mixed together you will hardly notice! Wrong. The end product for the whole lot ended up the same milky colour. Not diluted at all. But the flavour was most excellent. A very nice drop even if it looked a little opaque!!

The second run I used smaller jars for my cuts in case I got the mikiness at the end of the run again. But no, it was clear all the way. And we did a blind taste against tanquery, Bombay, four pillars and dobsons. It consistently ranked at the top end. Lovely complex flavours. This time we didn't crush our botanicals as fine as the first run (in case crushing too fine released too many oils). Next time I might add more lemon peel, but very very happy with this.

So how do I scale this recipe up to 150l?

I'll be using double distilled grape spirit as my base.

What would be the best alcohol level for running this through?

Run it at 40. Works a treat, my hot tip, don't go into the tails too far.

Darwin award wrote:Run it at 40. Works a treat, my hot tip, don't go into the tails too far.

I'll give it a shot. I have a fire extinguisher on hand if anything goes amiss. I've only been taking hearts from 83-89 deg, leaving lots of tails.

What water do you use was looking at buying some RO water or would water filtering some tank water be OK.

wynnum1 wrote:What water do you use was looking at buying some RO water or would water filtering some tank water be OK.

I use filtered town water for diluting to put back through the still. I buy Tamborine spring water when finishing off to bottle.

Flinderspeakstill wrote:

wynnum1 wrote:What water do you use was looking at buying some RO water or would water filtering some tank water be OK.

I use filtered town water for diluting to put back through the still. I buy Tamborine spring water when finishing off to bottle.

:text-+1:

:text-lol:

So I decided to give this recipe a crack as by maceration instead of botanicals in the vapour path.

I started with 2l of hearts from a TPW watered down to 40%. To this I added the following:

25g juniper berries
2 almonds
0.5g orris root (ground)
1/2 piece star anise
1/4 teaspoon (0.3g) coriander (ground)
1/4 cassia bark scroll
3 black pepper corns
1/8 teaspoon dill tips
3 grains of grains of paradise

I wanted to add a note of lime peel here too but didn't have one and then forgot to add it :shifty:

This was then allowed to macerate for 11 days. The juniper was the first botanical to take to the aroma of the batch. This was then overtaken by the other botanicals over time. I then filtered about a shot of this off, tried it, I think the cassia bark was a bit overpowering. As some of the herbs were ground the filter did not bring the liquid back to a clear colour. Was a bit brown in colour and not sexy. So the call was made to run this through a still. This was basically run through a de-tuned FSD 4 inch neutraliser (no plates or packed section, no cooling water on reflux condenser).

I took about 6 cuts across the still. Not that my nose is tuned into type of thing but I believe the juniper berries came through last in the run.

I then mixed all of the cuts back together as I did not notice too much of a change to the aroma over the various cuts and tried this again. I still think the cassia bark is still the overpowering botanical. It is definitely a gin with the juniper berries hiding in the background.

I am going to try running botanicals in the vapour path next. I just need to make a trip down to spotlight to find some muslin cloth that can hold ground herbs.

Has anyone else had success with making a gin via maceration? Also has anyone else found cassia bark overpowering? Also what size batches are people running through? As I am experimenting with flavours do you think running the equivalent of one 700ml bottle or less is possible?

In the end I want to get to a gin that is quite peppery with a citrus undertone, but need to master the basics first.

Hi MaKa,

Just macerating the botanicals in some drinking strength spirit is not really going to give you gin mate. You'll most likely end up with not so great tasting bitters.

The macerate must be re-distilled and you cuts carefully blended so that you end up with the good flavours in your product and the not so good flavours left behind in the boiler or in your feints.

I think macerating for 11 days is waaaaay too long and is probably going to bring out more nasty flavours than good ones. I wouldn't have thought you'd need to steep your botanicals in high proof neutral any more than 24 hours. (I use 85% Neutral and a 24 hour maceration period for my absinthe and I get more than enough flavour coming across though a pot still).

Cheers,
Prof. Green.