Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Rolls912 wrote:

Squid boy wrote:Peeled with all pith removed from the inside.

Interesting to see Four pillars don't remove the zest. They just cut them in half and toss them in.

The quantity they do mate they couldn’t afford to zest it

Rolls912 wrote:

Squid boy wrote:Peeled with all pith removed from the inside.

Interesting to see Four pillars don't remove the zest. They just cut them in half and toss them in.

It's pretty common in a commercial setting for the pith to remain. I don't think it's a labor cost thing, more a complete flavour idea. All the gins I've ever made have used dried peel (it's more consistent than fresh) and there's always plenty of pith on it.

Can you use the pith as bittering agent instead of wormwood as an example? Or just use less wormwood(or other bittering agent) to account for bitterness of pith?

I shave the pith off with a razor shape filleting knife, peel looks pure orange with no white at all.

Only a guess but if you left the citrus peel in the boiler during the gin run, any pithy bitterness would be quite strong. Macerating the botanical for 24 hours may not allow much bitterness to go through. On the last two gin runs, I followed Odin’s recipe exactly but did collect deeper into the tails in a few small containers to see what flavours would be present at the end. The fourth jar was skanky but the first and second jars after the cut did contain woody and peppery flavours. Ended up keeping two of them as I wanted a bit of a peppery bite. (I did have some pepper corns in the vapour path)

This is one reason I prefer one shot to infusing from baskets, you can use reflux to push bitter compounds back to the pot because they're heavy.

Some bitterness can be tasty in a gin, but for the most part humans are wired to be hypersensitive to bitterness and prefer sweet flavours because poisons are often bitter. For more earthy pleasant warming flavours I'd add more ginger, cinnamon, cassia, toasted wattle, or anything else in that warm baking spice group of flavours. It gives more of the bottom end without the bitterness. Wormwood can be good in a gin, but it tends to be the "top notes" that I taste in most gins with it in their botanical list.

Lowie wrote: I now use my spent grains with sugar to make a sugarhead.

What a great idea Lowie, beats tossing them in the bin. Don't know why I never thought of it :angry-banghead:

This could be slightly off topic, but using a gin basket
Plenty of lemons about at the moment. Just did a vapour infused lemon vodka using a gin basket on a 4" reflex still, just using the packed section and a gin basket. The run was 4.350 of filtered hearts (vodka) put in with 7 litres of water (about 15%) 100 grams of Zested lemon peel. Run it about 88% took of 1st 50mls and took 400ml form the dump valve. blended and also put in the 50mls and 40mls After blending got about 1.5 litres of 88% (No tails in it) so 3 litres of 44%. A shot in some soda water, squeeze of lemon and a slice of lemon and ice and a teaspoon of sugar. Very nice. Thinking of preserving lemons and next time just use the whole quarter peel. Anybody done this ? https://www.marthastewart.com/249478/preserved-lemons

bluc wrote:Can you use the pith as bittering agent instead of wormwood as an example? Or just use less wormwood(or other bittering agent) to account for bitterness of pith?

Speaking of bitter, I used finger lime caviar last week. Bitter as f@*K. :shock: 200 grams / 25 litres. Way too much.

Caviar? Is that the small limes that are a bit like pommegrenite inside..

I make a lot of gin and give a lot away, I strictly use white processed cane sugar and yeast, that's it. I distill in a 5 plate column with a gin basket and I'll even toss juniper in the boiler. The cuts on the strictly sugar wash are very simple and if you finger taste along the way you'll quickly find out what U like and don't like and what to keep. On a typical wash I will toss the first 100-150 ml just because, I'm constantly finger tasting this and I don't run it through a parrot till the fore's are gone, slip the parrot inn (oh so naughty) and run her gently, ;)

TL.....

Has been awhile and have tried running cereal wheat washes. Love the smell so much have run a few stripping then a spirit run and put on toasted oak for a whiskey knock off. Will try to leave for 12 months
Have also used for a gin run and tastes better but think It still needs some work. Did make a nice citrus gin but could not taste the juniper, bugger have to try again now. Haha

i just usually tpw then nice slow run on my VM. T500 just run it slower, I used to like to run around 50c temp for a pretty good neutral, though I would probably suggest a carbon filter for your absolute top shelf gin. If you don't cf, then use your heart of hearts for your gins.