Giddy from Rural NSW

[Biggles]

Biggles here. I've been brewing beer for years and using my Turbo500 for about 8 years.
Getting a nice product and great range with my go to being Aussie Gold.
Recently trying to perfect Gin which is very popular at the moment it seems.
Bought a botanicals basket with the idea of making a perfect Gin based at least a bit on traditional techniques
rather than just the bottled flavours.
1st attempt not good.
As my wife said it's just sugar try again and I shall
With a little help from my new friends!!

Cheers Biggles

[Sam.]

Welcome mate, after doing some reading here your going to have some questions for your home brew shop that they are not going to like :D

[Tesla101]

Welcome Biggles :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[bluc]

Welcome biggles :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[woodduck]

Welcome mate.

Your gonna struggle to make gin in the T500 unless you have a pot still attachment. The T500 will make a good neutral base but will strip too many flavors for the gin run.

Best of luck

[Biggles]

Even if I take all the saddles out of the condenser?

[woodduck]

You'll risk getting the top plastic peice too hot and it will leak. Im not experienced in these stills but from what I've read they don't like it.

Hopefully someone with the experience will chime in soon.

[db1979]

Welcome mate, lots of good advice here, and lots of ex-t500 users to help out too. I'm not a t500 user too but what woodduck says is something that comes up often.

[Professor Green]

Welcome Biggles.

Making gin with the T500 is going to be difficult as they are designed to strip flavour and they do have a predisposition to failure if you run them without the packing and they get too hot. I know someone here does make gin with their T500 though so perhaps they'll chime in soon.

Augmenting your T500 set up with a pot still if you can would enable you to get the best out of that botanical basket. If you're in any way handy with tools you could probably knock yourself up a simple pot still for your T500 boiler fairly easily, if not, an off-the-shelf option is also available from 5 Star or you could have a look at the For Sale section here and see if something pops up there.

You can also make great gin by distilling macerated botanicals rather than vapour infusing too (there's a number of threads on this floating around the forum if you want more info on that).

Cheers,
Prof. Green.