I receive a lot of gin distilling questions on Instagram and from my YouTube subscribers. I decided to round up my most frequently asked gin distilling questions and answer them all here. Let me know in the comments if there is a distilling question you have that I didn’t answer.
Distilling Question #1 Should I macerate my botanicals in the spirit or not?
I have worked at distilleries where they macerate their botanicals in spirit overnight before starting the distillation. I’ve also worked at other distilleries where they don’t macerate their botanicals at all. Instead, they just charge the still with the botanicals, spirit, and water and start the distillation immediately. People who argue for macerating the botanicals say that this will help extract more flavours from the botanicals. Conversely, people against macerating say that it extracts unwanted aromas and flavours from the botanicals. It all comes down to what botanicals you are using for your gin recipe and your desired gin flavour profile.
There really is no right or wrong answer here. It’s up to you to taste and experiment with macerating and not macerating your botanicals.
Distilling Question #2 If I decide to macerate my botanicals, how long should I do this for?
If you decide to macerate your botanicals, then most distillers will usually macerate for 12-24 hours. So you’d charge the still the day before, and then the next day you’d turn on the still to do the distillation. Macerating for 36hrs and up to 48hrs is common too. After 48 hours, it is usually thought that most of the flavour compounds have been extracted. Thus, it is not worth it to macerate for more than 48 hours. Although I have heard of distilleries who macerate their botanicals for up to a week.
An important thing to keep in mind if you are distilling commercially is production times. If you macerate your botanicals for a longer period, that means your gin production time will also be longer. Since it takes longer for your gin to be ready to sell this can cause logistical and production scheduling problems. You might miss out on gin sales because it takes you longer to produce your gins. However, if you are a home distiller then this is not an issue for you. You can macerate your botanicals for as long as you want.
Distilling Question #3 If I decide to macerate my botanicals in the spirit, what temperature should the spirit be?
Whenever I have macerated botanicals in spirit, it has always been with room temperature liquid (18-24°C). I have heard of people heating their liquid. The idea is that the warmer the liquid, the easier and faster it will be to extract botanical flavours. However, if the liquid is too warm then you risk cooking the botanical. Cooking the botanicals will change the flavour extracted from them. As well, the cooked botanicals may caramelize to the inside of the still and give off undesirable caramelized flavours.
Distilling Question #4 What should the percentage of the alcohol be that I charge my still with for the distillation?
Usually, people will charge the still with 40-60%abv spirit for a gin distillation. At the distilleries I have worked at, it is usually 40% abv. Some flavour compounds are more ethanol-soluble, whereas other compounds are more water-soluble. If you want to target more ethanol soluble flavour compounds then you can charge the still with a higher percentage spirit. Conversely, if you want to target more water-soluble flavour compounds you can charge the still with a lower percentage spirit.
You don’t want to charge the still with a very high %abv spirit, like 80%, because that will mean a short distillation. A high %abv means there is more ethanol in the mixture and ethanol has a lower boiling point than water. A shorter distillation will mean you have not extracted as much of the flavour compounds from the botanicals as you may have liked.
Distilling Question #5 Should I crush my botanicals to get more surface area from them, or should I just leave them whole?
To crush or not to crush? Crushing the botanicals means you get more botanical surface area to spirit. You can extract more flavour out of the botanicals this way. In commercial distilleries, botanicals are usually not crushed because it takes more time to do (adding to the production time). So rather than crushing, it is easier for distilleries to simply increase the amount of botanicals in the gin recipe. Some people argue that by crushing the botanicals versus leaving them uncrushed, you are changing the flavour profile of the gin distilled.
There is no right or wrong answer here. It depends on the gin recipe and what you are looking for flavour-wise. You can test with crushing and not crushing your botanicals and see which you prefer.
Distilling Question #6 How do I go about making a gin recipe and selecting my botanicals?
Good distilling question, I’ve already written a post about how to make and distil a gin recipe, so feel free to look at that post here.
Distilling Question #7 Why do you take a heads cut in your gin distillation if you are charging the still with neutral grain spirit? Shouldn’t neutral grain spirit be flavourless and free from methanol?
Chances are you are using your still to distil multiple gin recipes and other types of spirits. We take a heads cut not necessarily to remove any flavour compounds (congeners) from the neutral spirit. Instead, we use the first fraction of distillate to rinse any unwanted bitter compounds from the condenser piping. These are leftover residues from the tails of the previous distillation and are undesirable in the quality gin we are trying to produce.
Additionally, methanol is notoriously difficult to separate from ethanol. So even if you are using 96%abv neutral grain spirit there are still trace amounts of methanol in it. It is highly unlikely that these trace amounts will cause you any bodily harm if ingested. I’ve worked at places where they didn’t bother to take a heads cut in their gin distillation, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
Distilling Question #8 Should I distil all my botanicals separately and then blend the distillates together to create a gin, or should I just distil all my botanicals together? Which is better?
Some gins are made by having each botanical distilled separately and then the distillates are later blended to produce the gin. This is a perfectly valid way of making gin. Keep in mind that distilling each botanical separately and blending the distillates afterward will produce a slightly different gin than if you were to distil all the botanicals together. However, this method gives you more control in the production of the gin and allows for more recipe experimentation.
The downside is that it is more time-consuming to do since you have to do many more distillations. It requires more containers to store all the distillates, and more energy and more money will be needed to run all the distillations.
Distilling Question #9 Which botanicals are better vapour infused and which are better being distilled directly in the liquid?
Again there is no right or wrong answer to this question. It depends on your gin recipe and what you are looking for flavour-wise. You may find that you like to vapour infuse some of your gin botanicals and have the rest in the pot with the liquid. Or, you may just want to keep things easy for yourself and decide that all your botanicals will be vapour infused. Or that all the botanicals will be distilled in the pot.
It tends to be that herbs (ex. rosemary and thyme) or flowers (ex. rose petals and lavender) will do better being vapour infused so that they don’t dominate the gin.
Distilling Question #10 I have heard that I need to add either orris root or angelica root to my gin recipe, since they act as fixatives
Orris root and angelica root are widely regarded as fixatives in gin. This means that they equalise the vapour pressure of volatile compounds in a mixture. In simpler terms, they aid in keeping the gin aromas in the liquid medium. They fix flavours in place so that the gin flavour remains the same even after a long period of time. These two botanicals are primarily used in the perfume industry for this reason. However, there is a lot of debate as to whether they are really fixatives.
You will find that they are common ingredients in gin recipes. If you are adding orris root or angelica root to a gin recipe for their fixative properties, keep in mind that these ingredients have their own flavours. Orris root has woodsy and floral aromas, and Angelica root has herbal, earthy, and woody aromas.
Distilling Question #11 The gin I distilled is cloudy and murky looking, why is that?
This is known as gin louching or the ouzo effect. Botanicals have oils in them, which are collected in the distillate. Sometimes when the oils are especially big or heavy they will come out of solution. This results in a cloudy-looking gin. If you want to learn more about how to prevent gin louching check out my Gin louching post here.
Distilling Question #12 The gin I distilled has a green tinge to it, what is that?
If you have a copper still, then when the copper oxidizes through water contact it can turn a blue-green colour. Sometimes this will also result in a greenish blue-tinged distillate, or toxic verdigris, being produced. This is poisonous if ingested. Please be sure to clean your copper with a caustic cleaner to prevent this from happening.
Distilling Question #13 Is a copper still or a metal still better for distilling gin?
If you are using 96% neutral grain spirit to charge your still, then it really doesn’t matter too much whether you are using a copper or metal still, as the gin botanicals will dominate the flavour profile of the gin.
However, if you are making the base spirit yourself, in other words, you are taking a raw material such as malt and mashing it, fermenting it, and distilling it to create a base spirit which you will then use to do a gin distillation with, copper is preferred as it helps to remove undesirable compounds such as sulfur from the distillate. You wouldn’t want stinky rotten egg smells being passed off into your gin after all.
Distilling Question #14 If a gin distillery makes their own base spirit, is the gin they produce better than a distillery that buys in NGS?
Ooh, controversial question. The majority of gin distilleries buy in neutral grain spirit to do their gin distillations with. These gin distilleries argue that the flavour of the gin comes from the botanicals and not from the base spirit that is being charged into the still. Other gin distilleries who bring in a raw material such as malt and mash it, ferment it, and distil it to create a gin will obviously take great pride in the fact that unlike the majority of their competitors they are making their own alcohol. As well, they will argue that the base material used to create the alcohol, e.g. grape skins, wheat, or malt, is important and does impact the final flavour of the gin.
Producing your own base spirit requires much more time, money, energy, and effort than simply buying in neutral grain spirit. I think it is important to recognize the fact that this is a more time and money intensive process, and should be reflected in the price of the gin.
Distilling Question #15 Which is a better method for distilling gin, multi-shot distillation, or single-shot distillation?
A multi-shot distillation is where a gin concentrate is produced by increasing the gin botanical load in your recipe by 2 fold or even 200 fold. Then neutral grain spirit and water are added to it to produce a gin of the desired alcohol percentage and volume. So you can collect 20L of gin distillate and produce 200L of gin using this method. For a single-shot distillation, you put in the normal botanical load, collect the distillate, and then add water to achieve the desired alcohol percentage. So if you collect 20L of distillate you’ll probably end up with around 40L of gin.
As you can see the multi-shot process is more time, energy, and money efficient. Some people argue that it is a very lazy way of making gin and that it produces an inferior gin to the single-shot method. Others have said that in a blind taste test, no difference can be found between samples of gin produced using the single-shot method versus the multi-shot method. I’ll leave it to you to decide which method is better (if there even is one).
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