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Gin tastes too similar to ethanol
After years of thinking about it, I got a 50L still last year and spent much of the Covid lockdowns converting my loft as my distillery, which went really well. After a lot of searching, I bought a still from China, from DYE, which seem to be at least recognized for their equipment quality compared to many Chinese suppliers. It has SS kettle, copper 4 inch reflux (with 4 bubble plates), 5Kw heater, copper dephlegmator, copper gin basket and copper condenser and parrot. I ran it last week and the run went well, performing at 95-92 proof for most of the run which I was really pleased with. I made my cuts at the start and continued to take cuts throughout the run, a pint at a time, but the result has strong ethanol undertones to the gin after reducing it down to 40 proof, even at the heart of the run. The botanicals were a bit imbalanced (too citric), but that’s to be expected and I know it will take time to get right, but any ideas on the taste? I started with a sugar wash, which was only 10 percent, so nothing extreme, although I did struggle with a stuck fermentation, so added more yeast to get it going again. It seems more suited to cleaning windows than drinking! Any ideas/thoughts?
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20 Replies
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As I read your description it sounds like you ran your sugar wash through the column with your botanicals in the basket. This is not how you make gin. Sorry.First you need to make your neutral. The best way is to strip 3 (or more) batches of wash quickly (in pot still mode) and then dilute the low wines with water before running them slowly through the plates. Now you make your cuts, selecting only the cleanest hearts for gin stock.Using that stock you can now either macerate your botanicals or stick them in the gin basket. Take a look at Odin’s Easy Gin in the Tried and True recipes.And then read.And then read some more.And then go read some more.I don’t want to be a dick, but you don’t seem to know what you’re doing at all which suggests that you’ve a lot of learning to do before you start running. Good luck.”I have a potstill that smears like a fresh plowed coon on the highway” – JimboA little spoon feeding *For New & Novice Distillers
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Your still is perfectly modular so you can change it up very easily. First do a good wash or mash fermentation. Now load the boiler with your wash/mash. All you need to do a stripping run with a pot still is your boiler, your product condenser, two of your elbows and an adapter to connect the elbow to your boiler. Crank up the power to max (or however much power your product condenser can knock down), collect everything that comes out (some remove foreshots) and I stop collecting once the total product I have collected reaches 40% ABV. Some strip more, some strip less.Now you want do do a spirit run. Assemble your rig with your plates, dephlegmator, gin basket and product condenser. Load the boiler with your collected low wines and dilute it with as much water as you can. Diluting the hell out of your low wines helps to make a cleaner neutral. Do your spirit run slow, make cuts and it should be quite clean. It may be even cleaner if you used a packed column instead of 4 plates. Once you have produced a clean neutral, you can use it to make gin.4″ VM Build
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What they said.I suspect the gin basket is connected back to front.
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I think so too NZChris . It’s normally shown in at the bottom and out at the top . However you may need to rearrange the furniture to fit it in there . I agree with others operational suggests . But further down the track when you are more familiar with the whole making a Neutral bit , you can start the Neutral run and once you are into clean hearts , you put still in full reflux .( turn up the water flow in the Deflagmator …..this will stop vapour going out into basket ) . Using Welding gloves , load the Botanicals into the very hot basket .Then reduce coolant flow to Deflagmator and start taking off Gin product.Now , to be honest , you are not going to get a super clean Neutral from that still . Certainly not on a one and done with a sugar wash . Many add a packed column section above the plates ( and below the Deflagmator ) to clean it up more than the plates will provide .My recommended goto .wiki/index.ph … ion_Theory
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You need to do a lot more reading about making gin…..Ive yet to see anyone make good gin straight from wash.Learn to make good neutral first, that in its self might take you time to get right before you move on to make gin.Start with a good clean neutral wash like shadys sugar shine, strip it first before doing the spirit run.A packed section above those plates will help you get a better neutral product.Plated columns alone are designed for making flavoured brown spirits.Once you have got your neutral making skills sorted you would be best of to start out with a well proven method and botanical bill like Odins Easy Gin.Also you don’t need a gin basket to make great gin, they make a wishy washy mild tasting gin imo.
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Thanks all for the replies so far. I know I have a lot to learn and perhaps jumping straight in is not the right thing to do, but I think I’ve learn’t a great deal from the experience, and for explaining my efforts that have received your valued feedback. I appreciate some think you should just keep reading, but sometimes it’s hard to see the wood for the trees with so many different set-ups, so having a go, albeit safely, is a great way to learn. I can see I need to learn much more about getting good neutral first and the feedback has given me a clearer direction on what I need to read further about…. perhaps less YouTube videos too!Thanks again for the help – I’m not scared to try or worried about criticism, so any more help / advice, or kicks in the nuts greatly received!
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I think you’re right as usual Chris. I had a picture from the factory of it set up this way, so followed that, but now I have looked at their brochure and it is indeed supposed to be running in at the bottom and out of the top. Many thanks.
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I think so too NZChris . It’s normally shown in at the bottom and out at the top . However you may need to rearrange the furniture to fit it in there . I agree with others operational suggests . But further down the track when you are more familiar with the whole making a Neutral bit , you can start the Neutral run and once you are into clean hearts , you put still in full reflux .( turn up the water flow in the Deflagmator …..this will stop vapour going out into basket ) . Using Welding gloves , load the Botanicals into the very hot basket .Then reduce coolant flow to Deflagmator and start taking off Gin product.Now , to be honest , you are not going to get a super clean Neutral from that still . Certainly not on a one and done with a sugar wash . Many add a packed column section above the plates ( and below the Deflagmator ) to clean it up more than the plates will provide .You and Chris and right about the basket! Also, when you say, ‘add a packed column section above the plates’, you mean another section above the 4th plate? Do you pack that with marbles, copper wire? Appreciate the feedback.
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Got that right We all had to do it , find and use the forum search functions ..it will help you a lot……most people will also happily answer questions ..a few will not.Marbles are one method, IMO proper structured copper mesh is the way to go, just costs more, there are many options as far as packing goes for columns, some work better than others. As your still is it will pull about 92% abv …..with a packed section with the right packing material used it should pull 95+ from start to finish. The difference is that those last few percent are ethanol…..not water, unwanted tastes and other by products.
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Bill, I’m wondering what you mean by ‘proper structured copper mesh’. Rolled up scrubbies or do you have something more sophisticated?
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Bill, I’m wondering what you mean by ‘proper structured copper mesh’. Rolled up scrubbies or do you have something more sophisticated?Something like this I guess. Not pushing the supplier, just where mine came from. I think various US distilling companies sell similar.”I have a potstill that smears like a fresh plowed coon on the highway” – JimboA little spoon feeding *For New & Novice Distillers
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Bill, I’m wondering what you mean by ‘proper structured copper mesh’. Rolled up scrubbies or do you have something more sophisticated?Something like this I guess. Not pushing the supplier, just where mine came from. I think various US distilling companies sell similar.Yeah, that’s the same stuff I use above my ceramic Raschig rings to put some copper in the vapor path. I like the Raschig rings and have had good luck with them but depending on how my upcoming experiments go may start looking for something more efficient from a height standpoint. We’ll see.
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Bill, I’m wondering what you mean by ‘proper structured copper mesh’. Rolled up scrubbies or do you have something more sophisticated?Something like this I guess. Not pushing the supplier, just where mine came from. I think various US distilling companies sell similar.Yeah, that’s the same stuff I use above my ceramic Raschig rings to put some copper in the vapor path. I like the Raschig rings and have had good luck with them but depending on how my upcoming experiments go may start looking for something more efficient from a height standpoint. We’ll see.I use one roll of copper and several rolls of SS mesh like this to pack my 1m 2″ column. I can pull azeo at up to around 1.3l/hr but above about 1L/hr it starts pushing tails… although that might be more related to my underpowered condenser. In any case it seems to work quite nicely.”I have a potstill that smears like a fresh plowed coon on the highway” – JimboA little spoon feeding *For New & Novice Distillers
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That’s it
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@ Rich73 Nice looking still. Since you want to make Gin.I’d get some SS spools for a packed column.Also, If it’s not neutral enough, dilute and run it again.
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AFAIK, offset gin baskets should be running dry by the end of the run, sending all of the useful VOCs to the condenser. I suspect that yours, being uninsulated copper, won’t be capable of doing this. The sight glass and valve is a giveaway that the supplier knows that it floods. You might have to wrap it in insulation to get it to work properly. The only one I’ve watched running, flooded.To get an idea of how they should be designed and used, surf the Bombay Sapphire website.
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You will get a much bolder gin by maceration then distillation then you will by vapour infusing also.
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LOL thanks for another fun fact for the day NZChris .Had to google VOC’s https://en.m.wikipedia.com/wiki/Volatil … c_compoundMy recommended goto .wiki/index.ph … ion_Theory
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VOC is an acronym we should all be familiar with, but I suspect most of us are not. Our hobby is all about VOCs, whether it’s removing them to make neutrals and Vodka, or capturing them to make high ester rums, gin, whiskey, Absinthe, etc……
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Nice looking set up, Rich. As the others have said, get your neutral sorted first. Ferment – strip – spirit run. Then head to Tried and True and use Odin’s Easy Gin (OEG) recipe. I strongly recommend marinating the botanicals for a couple of weeks in 42-43 abv, then straining and running just the spirit. I’ve found that putting juniper, citrus and coriander in the boiler ends up with a lot of oils in the finished product which will make your gin go cloudy when diluted past a certain point. If you don’t mind cloudy, then you can run the botanicals in the boiler after a day or so marinating. I like mine crystal clear so I marinate for two weeks. You toss the first 10-15ml as it’s very cloudy, but I still separate the next 200ml or so on the final gin run which contains a small amount of oil and will go slightly cloudy when I dilute it to 43%. Friends and family love it and all prefer it to commercial gin.Quick tip: If you want to experiment with flavours such as lemon or lime or rhubarb etc (a crazy amount of flavoured gins available these days), then it’s so easy to flavour the standard OEG after you’ve made it. I’ve bought a dozen 250ml flip top bottles and I’ve always got some experiments on the go (buy some butterfly pea flowers online and add a couple to a bottle of gin – it goes a gorgeous blue colour which turns purple when you add tonic).
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