The new distillery I am working at, Boothstown Gin, is housed inside the Coal & Cotton pub in Manchester. The spirits produced here are primarily sold to the pub. Although anyone can come in to purchase bottles of gin too. In this post I will go over how they make pink strawberry gin, one of the four core gins here.
The still used here is the exact same type of still as the one at the distillery I worked at in Wales. The Craft Distilling Business made both stills.
1. Loading the Still
Adam, the distillery manager, first weighs out the ingredients for the pink strawberry gin. We have cloves, angelica root, cardamom seeds, liquorice root, crushed cassia bark, lemon peel(coarse), orange peel, coriander seeds, juniper seeds, strawberry tea bags, strawberry essence, and red natural colouring. Then we take our spirit and botanicals downstairs to Tessy the still. Adam told me that they charge their still with 37.5% abv base vodka which they buy in by the bottle. After we’ve charged the still with 25L of vodka and put in our botanical bags, Adam will put the glass piece overtop and tighten the ring around it. Then he’ll go round to the back of the bar and flick the switch to turn on the stills. Now it’s all on, and we’ll just wait for it to heat up.
2. Running the Distillation
Their moonshine still called Tessy has a thumper or a doubler. The doubler or thumper, doesn’t have a heating element in it. This is why some people call it a parasitic boiler. Like a parasite, it feeds off the main boiler. When we turn the still on the heat causes the liquid to boil. The vapours rise and they have to go through the onion. The change in pressure will cause the heavier vapours to drop back down. The rest of the vapours will rise and go through all the piping before making it into the thumper. That is a long way to travel. When we turn the still on in the morning, all the pipework is still cold. As the vapours make contact with it, the cold pipework will cool down and condense back into a liquid.
The thumper will fill with condensed liquid and gradually heat up. Eventually it will be hot enough that you essentially have another mini distillation occurring in the thumper keg. The liquid in the thumper keg will boil. Then, the vapour will travel up into the condenser which contains cooling water.
3. Gin Distillate Collection
After 30 minutes, the spirit collection begins. There is a hydrometer bobbing inside the collection vessel, which helps give us a rough idea of the %abv.
We take 50mL per litre for our foreshots cut, so since we charged it with 25L, we will take 1.25L for the foreshots cut, which will be used to make hand sanitiser.
Spirit may splash out the top, so that’s why the top is also fitted with a glass dome. The distillation takes about an hour and a half to finish, and Adam runs it until the spirit being collected is 28%abv. After that, he will turn everything off. He then loosens the ring on the glass covering to allow steam to escape and the still to cool down.
After a few hours, Adam will remove the botanical bags and open a valve which feeds directly into the drain. Then he’ll also open the valve underneath the thumper keg drain out the liquid inside.
4. Cutting Back the Gin
The gin is taken up to the distillery room where Adam will add water to cut the gin to 40%abv. They use the single-shot distillation method. This means they just add water to cut the gin down to the desired %abv. This is different from the multi-shot distillation process, where both 96% neutral grain spirit and water are added.
Multi-Shot Process vs Single-Shot Process
Another difference between multi-shot and single-shot is that a flavour concentrate is distilled in the multi-shot process. I say flavour concentrate since this process uses a much higher amount of botanicals, so the distillate has a very concentrated flavour. Some people argue that the multi-shot process produces an inferior gin since you are adding 96% NGS straight into the final product. If you’ve ever tasted 96% NGS by itself, you’ll know that it has quite a harsh taste. By putting NGS directly into the final product you’ll get a gin that is arguably harsher on the palate. People who use the multi-shot process say that it is just a faster and more convenient way to produce a greater volume gin, which is true. If you distil a concentrate, you are saving time, power, and energy compared to the single-shot process.
5. Making Strawberry Gin Pink
To finish the pink strawberry gin, Adam will add a few drops of natural red colouring to give it a pink tint. He will also add a few drops of natural strawberry flavour essence. Then it is bottled with a timed filling device. We set the filling time for the pink strawberry gin to 4.07 seconds for a 50mL mini bottle. The filler head has a one second wait time between bottles. Then the miniature bottles are capped, labelled and they are ready to go!
Watch it on YouTube Below
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