Making Naturally Pink Gin

I learned how to make so many different products while working at the Shakespeare Distillery. One of them happened to be a naturally pink gin. Instead of using an artificial colourant, we used freshly squeezed rhubarb juice to give the gin a vibrant pink colour. In this post, I’ll go over how we made our lovely rhubarb gin.

Prepping the iStill

To prepare the still, I empty the pot and remove the sight glass after a gin distillation. I dissolve a handful of citric acid powder in hot water in a tray. The copper spiral packing material sits in the mixture for about 15 minutes. When I drain the citric solution, the copper regains its beautiful soft rose colour again. The cleaned copper packing is ready to take out any impurities in the next distillation.

Next, I weigh out our gentle botanicals: lemon peel, orange peel, and rose petal. They will sit on top of the copper packing material. Since they only come in contact with the rising alcoholic vapours during distillation, these botanicals are only vapour infused.

At the Shakespeare Distillery, our products are themed around Shakespeare, drawing inspiration from the Tudor period when he was alive. We include rose petals because the English rose, also known as the Tudor rose, is a symbol of England. This rose was adopted as the national flower during the reign of the Tudor kings.

I fill the iStill 250 with water and then add in neutral grain spirit which is 96%abv. Once the still is charged with alcohol and water, we close it up and turn the heat on.

Measuring the Botanicals

It usually takes about 45minutes for the still to heat up, so in the meantime we weigh out the rest of the botanicals that will go into the pot of the still. These botanicals include: fresh rosemary, plucked fresh from our little herb garden, juniper berries, lovage seeds, lemon balm, angelica root, coriander seeds, and sage. I wrap these botanicals in cheesecloth and suspend them inside the still.

Distillation

The column of the iStill is filled with ceramic shards. When the vapour hits a piece of ceramic it will cool down, turn back into a liquid, and fall back down. It is heated up again, and the process repeats until only the purest spirit reaches the top of the column. The very top section of the iStill has water running through it, so any vapour that reaches this section will condense and fall back down.

The collection of spirit is separated into four sections: the foreshots, the heads, the hearts, and the tails. We discard the foreshots since they have methanol and other poisons that can make you feel sick. Based on the temperature inside the pot, the iStill will make these cuts automatically. We collect the heads and the tails separately. The hearts, the good part, is collected into a50L steel drum.

Making Rhubarb Juice

After the distillation the gin is transparent, so we need to make it pink. We do this by adding rhubarb juice to it. We create rhubarb juice using bags of frozen sliced rhubarb. The rhubarb is allowed to defrost for 2-3 days and then pressed in a hydraulic fruit wine press.

The hydraulic fruit wine press has an inflatable bladder in the centre of it. A metal grate encircles the bladder. Once it is filled up we put on the top, and screw it on tight. A hose is attached to the base of the press, and when the water is turned on it fills up the inflatable bladder. The bladder will exert pressure on the rhubarb, pressing it against the metal grate until juices flow from it. Freshly pressed rhubarb juice is collected in a container placed below.

Making Pink Gin!

We pour rhubarb juice into the gin made the previous day. We also add in sugar syrup and water. While the freshly pressed rhubarb juice gives our gin its naturally pink colour, rhubarb is very tart in taste so adding sugar syrup is a necessity.

Rhubarb juice is a natural colourant that is added to the gin after the distillation process. Other distilleries I’ve spoken to that make “naturally pink gins” use ingredients such as hibiscus flowers, raspberries, or strawberries. The naturally-derived pink colour is unstable over long periods of time, and will fade away especially quickly when stored in direct sunlight. For this reason, we tend to only make a batch of rhubarb gin when needed. There is never an excess amount sitting in storage.

Artificial colourants can be added to give the pink colour long-term stability. However, selling gin with artificial colourants in it is not a great marketing point, so we prefer to keep things all natural.

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