At the Shakespeare Distillery, our products had a Shakespeare theme in that the ingredients in our gins were inspired by the Tudor period (which was the period when Shakespeare was alive.) Mulberries were a very popular fruit during that time which is why we used them in one of our gins. Below I outline the process for producing our mulberry purple gin liqueur.
Prepping the Still
When the iStill 250 finished a gin run, I would get the drainage pipe from the closet and set it up. Then I’d open up the hatch and take out the used botanical bags. Once all the liquid in the still was drained out, I’d rinse out the still with water. Then I’d slowly raise the top column part of the iStill to take out the sight glass and clean the copper packing material inside. The copper packing in the sight glass would be brought to the sink in the back and soaked in some warm water and citric acid, while I measured out the botanicals for the next gin distillation.
Once the copper packing material was back in the sight glass I’d put our “gentle” botanicals: rose petals, lemon peel, and orange peel inside the sight glass. Once in place, I’d charge the still with 96% neutral grain spirit and water. It usually took 45 minutes for the still to heat up, so in the meantime, we’d weigh out the rest of our botanicals that would go in the pot. Our recipe contained: fresh rosemary, juniper berries, lovage seeds, lemon balm, angelica root, coriander seeds, and sage. These botanicals would be wrapped in cheesecloth and hung on a hook inside the iStill.
Distillation
The spirit collection would be separated into four sections: foreshots, heads, hearts, and tails. We’d discard the foreshots since they contained trace amounts of methanol and other poisons that could make someone sick. Based on the temperature inside the pot, the iStill would make these cuts automatically. The heads and the tails would be collected separately, while the hearts (which was the good part) would be collected in a 50L steel drum.
Mulberries and Shakespeare
The story goes that in 1607 and 1608 King James I of England asked the nobility to plant 10,000 mulberry trees to support an English silk industry to rival that of France and Italy. Unfortunately, silk production didn’t take off in England, and it is often repeated that King James I project failed because he imported the “wrong” tree, as silkworms prefer eating the leaves of the white mulberry tree over the black mulberry tree. Silkworms produce coarser silk and less silk when they feed on black mulberry leaves. However, it is more likely that silkworms disliked Britain’s cold and damp climate.
The popularity of this fruit in history led to its addition in our purple gin liqueur recipe.
Our gin was clear after the distillation, so we had to make it purple. We did this by steeping dried mulberries in it for around three months. The dried mulberries were a bit tart at the start when I tasted them, but they had a nice rich sweet flavour to them as well.
My boss, David, told me that once a year they usually go to New Place, which was William Shakespeare’s final place of residence in Stratford-upon-Avon. There is a mulberry tree planted there which is a descendent of a mulberry tree that Shakespeare himself planted. With the approval of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, they harvest the mulberries from this tree to make their purple mulberry gin liqueur. David said that you have to be very gentle when harvesting fresh mulberries as they break and mush easily. This is why you’ll never find them in the supermarket.
Turning the Gin Purple!
We divided our mulberries into two muslin bags. Then, we took our distilled gin and added reverse osmosis water to it to bring it down to 50%abv. Then we steeped our mulberries in the gin. After three months, the mulberries would be removed.
David then added sugar cane syrup and more reverse osmosis water to bring the spirit down to 30% abv. We made a purple gin liqueur and not a gin. What’s the difference? A gin must legally be at least 37.5%abv to be a gin. In contrast, liqueurs have a lower %abv than this, usually 20%abv. As well, gin liqueurs are usually sweeter and easier to drink than gins.
Checking the %ABV
After making the liqueur we needed to measure the %abv. We weren’t able to use the Anton Paar Snap 40 because the sugar content from the mulberries would mess up the reading. So what did we do?
Well, our method of checking the %abv was to take a 250mL sample of the purple gin liqueur and put it in one of our small copper pot stills. To this we added 150mL of water. Then, we distilled it. The water we added was purely to ensure that the pot never boiled dry during the distillation. We were trying to distil out all the alcohol from our sample. We collected around 220mL of spirit from this distillation, which we topped up with water to 250mL. Then we used the Anton Paar to measure the %abv. After this check was complete, the collected spirit was poured back into the container with the mulberry purple gin liqueur.
Watch it on YouTube Below
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