Mulberry Mango Gin & Gin Recipe Testing

My boss at the Shakespeare Distillery gave me the opportunity to develop my very own gin recipe in the gin school. Needless to say, I was super excited about it. Below you will find the details of my experiments with different gin recipe ideas, from Hong Kong Lemon Tea Gin to Mulberry Mango Gin, I experimented with various fruity recipe ideas.

Gin Recipe 1: Lemon Tea Gin

I didn’t know where to begin with making my own recipe. Simon(my boss) suggested that I try coming up with a recipe using the gin botanical grouping chart they have. My initial idea was to make something like a Hong Kong-style lemon tea gin, a drink that I love. I distilled a base gin using more lemony citrus botanicals like lemon verbena, lemon peel, orange peel, and coriander seeds. I also steeped some Tetley tea bags to make an orange pekoe tea concentrate, and prepared some fresh lemon juice.

Then I combined the gin with the tea, lemon juice, and simple syrup to see how it tasted. I made up samples of ~40mL but they all tasted gross. The lemon verbena and the orris root made the gin taste like a strong perfume. The tea and lemon juice gave it a weird yellowish colour that everybody said looked like urine, so I ended up dumping the whole litre of gin down the drain.

Gin Recipe 2: Blueberry Hops

I had another genius idea of making a blueberry hop gin. So I went to the store and bought a half pint of blueberries and smashed them up. Then I put them into the still along with the neutral grain spirit and other botanicals.

I distilled it, but again the flavour was quite perfume-like and none of the blueberry flavour came through at all. The hops just gave it a really weird taste that I didn’t enjoy. It was an odd herbal flavour that felt overpowering. I had also wanted to buy some blueberry juice when I was at the grocery store, but I couldn’t find any so I settled on a bottle of Robinson’s Creations blackberry blueberry squash. I made up a sample of the gin with the squash, and while the squash gave it an amazing purple colour, the taste left much to be desired. All I tasted was the artificial berry flavour from the squash. Since squashes contain sweeteners like aspartame instead of sugar, there was also an unpleasant aftertaste to it.

Gin Recipe 3: Pomegranate Gin

After those two big failures I decided to try again with a different recipe. In my third attempt at a recipe I tweaked the lemon tea recipe and tried to make it into a pomegranate gin by adding pomegranate juice to it afterwards.

For this recipe, I ordered some pomegranate juice off of Amazon. I expected the juice to have a deep vibrant red colour like POM, but instead it was an incredibly unattractive brown colour. After I distilled the gin base, I diluted it down with reverse osmosis water and the pomegranate juice. After a few days, I poured out some samples for everyone to try. This was the first gin recipe I let Simon try, as the first two were so bad I immediately poured them down the drain.

Even though I bought pure pomegranate juice, people said it had an artificial taste to it, and I could see what they were saying when I tasted it myself. My third recipe fail!

Gin Recipe 4: Blueberry Rosemary

For my fourth attempt at a gin recipe, I tried to re-work the blueberry hops recipe into a blueberry rosemary gin. I thought rosemary would pair better with blueberries. The botanicals in my recipe were: juniper berries, freeze dried blueberries, dried blackberries, coriander seeds, lemon peel, orange peel, orris root, rosemary and black peppercorns.

I distilled those botanicals to create my gin base and then added pure blueberry juice and simple syrup to my gin samples. Again this recipe did not go down well with the tasting panel.

Gin Recipe 5: Mango Gin

Well, my first four gins were hated, but I resolved to try one more time. This time I did away with the idea of adding a juice or squash to the gin afterward. I think I was making things unnecessarily complicated for myself, so I wanted to simplify things by just making a dry gin. This time I decided to simply put some botanicals I liked together.

In my new recipe I had mango, almond, juniper, coriander, pink peppercorn, vanilla bean, mulberries, dry orange peel and dry lemon peel.  I distilled it and I actually thought it was quite nice. However, the mango flavour wasn’t strong enough, and the herbal character was a bit on the strong side.

Gin Recipe 6: Mulberry Mango Gin Recipe

In my new updated recipe (which I was very happy with) I put in 7cm of dried mango peel (7.45g), 1/2tsp of finely ground almonds, 30g of juniper berries, 2g of coriander seeds, 2 pink peppercorns, 0.75g of angelica root, 3mm of vanilla bean, 5 dried mulberries (3.22g), 2 pieces of dried orange peel (0.24g), and 1 piece of dried lemon peel (0.1g). I measured out these botanicals and put them in a copper alembic still along with 1L of neutral grain spirit. Then I collected about 425mL and then diluted the gin back down to 40% abv.

I tasted it after letting it sit for a few days. The gin had a strong sweet mango flavour, without the herbal perfume-like flavour that the previous version had. I think this was because I decreased the angelica root from 1g to 0.75g, and increased the amount of mango in it. Simon said that it was my best gin recipe to date, but because it did not suit his tastes he would not be using my recipe.

That’s just the way it is sometimes. However, because Simon didn’t like it I am able to share the recipe for this mango mulberry gin here. If you ever try to make it for yourself, do let me know what you think of it in the comments below.

P.S. I won’t be upset if you don’t like it. I am inured to harsh criticism by now =)

Mulberry Mango Gin Recipe

Ingredients

• 7cm of Dried Mango Peel (7.45g)
• 1/2tsp Ground Almond 30g
• Juniper Berries
• 2g Coriander Seeds
• 2 Pink Peppercorns
• 0.75g Angelica Root
• 3mm Vanilla Bean
• 5 Dried Mulberries (3.22g)
• 2 Pieces of Dried Orange Peel (0.24g)
• 1 Piece of Dried Lemon Peel (0.1g)

Method

1. Measure out all the botanicals.
2. Measure out 1L of 40%abv neutral grain spirit or vodka.
3. Fill pot of still with the spirit and the botanicals
4. Turn on the still. Place a small cup underneath to collect the heads.
5. Collect 10ml of heads and discard.
6. Begin collection of hearts, collect ~425mL.
7. Stop the distillation and turn off the heat.
8. Add distilled or reverse osmosis water to the distillate until 1L of gin in total, or until the desired abv% is reached.
9. Allow the gin to rest for 1-2 weeks for the best flavour.

Watch it on YouTube Below