Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Does anyone have any good recipes ?

Also does anyone know any places in melb to get botanicals ?

I have a 50L keg of hearts ready to run in my carter head.

Odin's easy gin is a cracker. You'll need to google it as it's not posted anywhere on this site.

Austral herbs are the best place for quality botanicals. They're in NSW but will ship to Melbourne. $50 minimum order though.

Ok thanks professor :handgestures-thumbupleft: I will have a look into it.

Have you run your carter head yet? Ive had mine awhile just never had the time to run it yet

Sadly no. Same deal - no time.

I'm looking at moving to another location over the next year so will hopefully have more time (and a better space) to work in.

I got my Angelica and Oris root from Austral herbs, the rest I got from local emporiums that sell juniper etc. loose from bulk. I ran Blonde Chaps recipe in the tried and proven section on a carter head with 3 plates beforehand using just 6 litres of 93% hearts diluted with water. I collected down to 30% doing cuts to assess the fractions and ended up with a total volume of 5L at 81% average abv. I dilute this to 45% drinking strength and it tastes like a nice gin but I am not a big gin drinker and want to try more interesting variations. Next run I am looking to reduce the juniper and increase the other botanicals plus add lemon myrtle. The problem for me is this is too much gin to deal with, maybe I can blend the two runs but 10L of drinking strength gin per run, is way too much, and I need to scale down my recipe development.

You say that now peter, just wait for 2 years time when you go "gee i wish i had more of run X", at our home level its pretty hard (certainly not impossible though) to make consistent product, everything gets better or tastes different with age too just to throw a curve-ball...

Storage is of course an issue ~x(

Yeah you can never have enough. I was never a gin drinker until i tried docs gin and it was good :obscene-drinkingdrunk:

Docs bitters in vodka are better than any gin i have tried..

doc makes bitters..... do tell..... would like to hear more.... if possible try some

On his distillery site if not email him he may have some :handgestures-thumbupleft:

There was a post somewhere on here about how he makes it :handgestures-thumbupleft:

This is one possibly?

http://www.aussiedistiller.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5231&p=88559&hilit=Morticians+Glue#p88559

Hi All,

Hoping someone can help me out. I made some gin last week using neutral from a WBAB wash.

I put the botanicals in the pot with 1L of 95% neutral for 1 hour, then added 1.3 litres of water and then pot stilled it using my copper alembic 5L still.

The recipe is below. It has a bitter taste to it. Can anyone pickup what may be contributing to this from the below botanicals?

Cheers

Hi GINKING.

How long did you macerate it before pot stilling it? I do mine for 24 hours

I also read on another forum where it's suggested to let it age for 5 weeks before drinking, to allow for all of the flavours to balance out. I can see in the notes of your image that it does say it's "a little bitter". Perhaps it just needs more time.

Aside from that it does look a little heavy on the coriander seeds, but I'm definitely not an expert on botanicals bills - I've still got the Gin L plates on 8-}

Did you manage to get some pith from the citrus in the mix?
That leaves a bitter taste.

I only macerated for 1 hour before staring the heat source. Next time I will macerate for 20 hours or so before distilling. I'll also change 1 thing. Not sure what though....

I don't think I had any pith as I zested the orange as the left over orange didn't look like the pith was exposed.

Do you think the lime (too much / not enough) maybe caused that bitter flavour?

I do remember the first 120mls that I didn't keep smelt nice and citrusy (maybe I should have kept it...I threw it out cause you always throw out the first bits).
The neutral was a very aggressive hearts cut - under this case do I need to throw anything out?

With only using hearts I don't throw anything out but check first few millilitres. I don't macerate just start the still up with the botanicals in a cotton bag in the vapour path above the boiler. Zest works better than citrus peel. Haven't tried lime peel but Kaffir lime leaf is nice. I have tried peppercorns and Grains of Paradise but they are not what I want so leave them out now. You have 1 gram of Tas Pepper Berry? I uses 1 peppercorn and can notice it. Perhaps this is the source of the bitter note?

I discard the first 10mL, as this mainly juniper oil and if left in can cause louching and and over powering juniper flavour.

My first gin run was a 5L maceration with about a dozen different botanicals in it, from one of the recipes on here. Don't get me wrong, it tasted great but I couldn't tell one flavour from another so I didn't know what to change.

I then went back to basics with Odin's Easy Gin so I could get a platform to work from and then just adding one ingredient at a time so I can learn what each one does to the flavour.
I'm hoping this way I can produce something that I really like and can expand on, rather than just throwing in random ingredients and hoping for the best.

GINKING wrote:I put the botanicals in the pot with 1L of 95% neutral for 1 hour, then added 1.3 litres of water and then pot stilled it using my copper alembic 5L still.

Try macerating your botanicals in 45% neutral for 12 hours instead of using 95%.
You could also try removing the citrus zest before you run it.

GINKING wrote:I only macerated for 1 hour before staring the heat source. Next time I will macerate for 20 hours or so before distilling. I'll also change 1 thing. Not sure what though....

I don't think I had any pith as I zested the orange as the left over orange didn't look like the pith was exposed.

Do you think the lime (too much / not enough) maybe caused that bitter flavour?

I do remember the first 120mls that I didn't keep smelt nice and citrusy (maybe I should have kept it...I threw it out cause you always throw out the first bits).
The neutral was a very aggressive hearts cut - under this case do I need to throw anything out?

What sort of ABV were you at when you cut to tails? I find that as the ABV decreases in the pot some botanical get quite woody and bitter. Some of that flavour can balance out a particularly floral or sweet botanical bill. If the neutral going in is nice an clean and cut well, there's no reason why you can't collect it as tails and re-run it back to neutral for another batch of gin later. It may require some filtering of course if you're using a little 5L copper alembic. I would also suggest adding a bit of licorice root, not much, probably as much as your cardamom. Licorice root acts as a bit of a sweetener.