My first Gin...

[Crophopper]

G'day All,

I've been lurking here a couple of years now. Due to my style of work I had a good 12 months away and have just got back into the hobby with a bit of time on my hands.
Like many I found the HBS before I found the forum and so, as the old story goes, ended up with a T500, the pot head and a box of that beautiful turbo yeast. I had a bit of success early on once I found the nutrigrain wash and the tips and tricks here and have run quite a few now with some pretty good neutral that I've played with. Up until now though I never had the time to give the pot still a shot.

When I bought the pot still I was also given the botanicals basket and a packet of SS Botanicals to go with it. I ran off a sugar wash this week and wanted to have a nudge with the Pot before I get into stripping my first rum wash which is sitting here beside me clearing up. Figured this Gin would be a good start to see how the setup worked.

I put the botanical mix in the basket and ran the neutral through it last night. I don't have a power controller hooked up yet (ordered one last week with the mind to run it on my rum spirit runs) and made about 16 cuts along the way. I was pretty heavy on cutting the fores back when I ran the wash through the reflux (250ml or so) so I only threw about another 100ml out. I realised half way through that i never crushed the botanicals and wasn't sure how that would affect the flavour.
By the end the first few jars of heads had a proper gin smell and taste but the rest was really very plain. I threw it all back in to the boiler this morning, crushed up the botanicals and I've just finished running it again. Once more - not a lot of flavour or smell (slightly better than the first run though). Just enough that I can identify it as a gin i guess but nothing like the bottle of gordon's I've got sitting here as my test.

I guess my question is, is it likely that I've run it too fast due to there not being a temp controller and therefore missed out on the flavour I was looking for, or - is it possible I've been too impatient and might need to let my cuts sit longer before I try them - or, might those botanicals that have been sitting in my kit the past 2.5 years just have been too old for the job?

I'm not too cut up about it - great learning experience.

Cheers!

Adz

[db1979]

Welcome cropphopper :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Not sure about your gin results, could be that they're too old. Anyway, gin isn't any easy thing. Good luck with your rum.

[Professor Green]

Welcome Crophopper.

If I've read things correctly, you're re-distilling a previously made neutral (diluted to under 40% I hope) with the botanicals suspended in the vapour path, is this correct?

How fresh were the botanicals?

One thing to remember too is that a vapour infused gin is going to be a less robust in flavour than a pot stilled gin. Many distilleries put the heavier components such as the juniper berries in the pot and vapour infuse the more delicate ones like rose petals etc. I can recommend Odin's Easy Gin a simple recipe that gives excellent results. You'll have to google it as Odin isn't a member here so his recipe isn't in the T&P section but it is easy to find.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

[Lesgold]

:text-+1:

[Doubleuj]

Gday crophopper, I moved your post to the welcome centre as it was your first post.
Welcome to the forum and feel free to ask any questions in this thread that you may have :handgestures-thumbupleft:
The search function will help you answer most questions though.
But as for gin, dB and the prof are on the money I think.
Good luck and enjoy the hobby :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[Crophopper]

Thanks for the warm welcome fellas.

You read it right Prof, I ran off the neutral with the reflux column, diluted it to about 30% and ran it twice more through the pot still head with the botanical basket attached.

I left all of my cuts to air out for about 8-9 hours and just came back to it. The flavours are somewhat better. Still not perfect but I know thats a long pursuit anyways - My bet is the botanicals were just past it. As far as Gin goes I quite like the Pinkster (Man card what?) and so looked it up. It seems that they use raspberries in theirs and so Ive raided the raspberries and thrown a handful in with the 3L of product to steep for a while. Maybe Ill end up with something drinkable and with a nice colour. If not i'll end up with another practice run on the still.

Just checked out Odin's recipe DoubleUJ, Sounds like a winner. Cheers for the tip.

:handgestures-thumbupleft:

[Tesla101]

Hi Crophopper and welcome!

I'm still a noob at this thing too, but I do have a similar setup to you - T500 alembic pot still & T500 reflux column.

I've made a nice gin with just macerating 1L of 93% neutral in a botanicals kit for about 24 hours and then filtering out the botanicals remains through a coffee filter, then diluting to about 45%. Not a pure gin by any standards but I didn't re-distill through the pot still because I didn't have a power controller at the time. In my mind the T500 boiler needs a power controller to tame it down a bit for doing a gin run with the pot still. My product did louche a lot when diluted, but still tasted pretty nice and like gin.

The next gin run I'm going to try is similar to the above, but now I have a power controller, doing the gin run with the allembic pot still. This will be after firstly doing a stripping run of a 75L TPW wash with the pot still, then a spirit run with the reflux column and doing cuts after discarding the foreshots, then macerating the hearts with the botanicals and finally diluting to 40% and re-distilling that through the pot still again.

Hopefully that will get me something gin-like that's as good as or a bit better than middle shelf bottle-o gin.

[Crophopper]

Cheers Tesla!

I am beginning to really agree about the power controller. I hope mine shows up soon. I've got my first rum wash stripping through the pot as we speak and had a cracker of a puke early on. Only way I could make it stop was to pull about 8L of wash out and give it some more head space. Tried the olive oil trick but it didn't seem to help. The other thing id love to see is a thermometer in the main body of the boiler. If i had a TIG welder id be tempted to put one in it.

After i read your post I grabbed some of the used up botanicals and threw a little bit in with the berry/gin mix. You might be on to something there!

I love this shit. If they'd don't this in chemistry at school there's no way id have failed :laughing-rolling: and I tell you what, this rum I am stripping is making my garage smell delicious!

[Lesgold]

Hi Crophopper,
I run a similar rig to you. The power supply is critical. I normally heat up without it and plug the power controller in when my first couple of drips come out of the still. Reduce power to about 120v as the foreshots begin to drip out. The temp in the pot will continue to increase but in a slower manner. The rate at which the foreshots come off will also increase so you can continue to reduce voltage on the controller to maintain a very slow output. After collecting foreshots, I slowly increase power until I get the output that I want. For gin, a slow output gives the best result. For a stripping run, I slowly dial up to maximum power, disconnect the controller and strip on full power. Odin’s gin recipe is simple and produces a yummy product. After a few runs, combining his method with a few botanicals in the gin basket helps you to refine the gin flavour to suit your own taste.

[Crophopper]

G'day Lesgold,

Thanks for the advice mate. I am currently sitting here doing my first Rum stripping run and having my first go with the power controller. I jumped on and ordered one last week when I saw your post. Seems to be making things much much easier so I am keen to give the Gin a crack next week when I have some more neutral.

Cheers!

[Lesgold]

Glad to hear it’s working for you. Hope you end up producing a drinkable gin with your next effort. Let us all know how it turns out.