With two elders who were both chemical engineers, I found it’s easy to restill with a stilling apparatus. However, usually with vodka, I set the stilling exercise to run so that what precipitates out of the cooling tube would be crystal clear neutral spirit — extremely slow flow rate. When stilling was done by them, it was generally run at a higher pace in order to purposely keep some of the flavorants in the cooled final product so that less water would be needed, and to preserve the distillate’s characteristics. It winded up tasting like tequila to a certain degree (due to the yeast from the alcohol making process).

What I’ve done is basically run an intensely flavored gin through a Brita about 10x for a smoothing effect that tempers the tastes. I’d never redistill gin to purify it unless I had a commercial alembic still because it would completely neutralize some of the good characteristics I would want to remain in the gin.

This thread warms my heart. Brings me back to the days of the copper pipe and silicon tubing line that my cousin architected to fit the need . . . it was just long enough to reach from a corner burner to the kitchen spigot.

Best wishes and thank you for allowing my comment. I’ve been an afficionado for a while now. Quite inspiring.

The aromatics and flavenoids, good and bad, are present in very small quantities. However, the nose can be extremely discriminating and these can be detected down to the parts-per-million level.

Finally I suspect your chemist friend may have tried pure 100% ethanol. Distilled ethanol can only be brought up to around 95% pure, the rest is water. It then has to be ‘dried’ to 100%.

For fuel ethanol (and others?) benzine is used to absorb the water and then the two compunds are seperated somehow. Another method, more expensive but I guess tastier, is to vacuum evaporate the ethanol.

Well, that’s it for me on this topic.

And it is very accurate… I just would comment, that also pot still have a reflux (especially tall and slender ones, stills with a kind of ball on the shoulder or pots with built in “floors”. More correct would be: that there are continuous stills (sollumn still, patent still, method armagnacaise etc.) and fractional stills (which is normally pot still & alambic).

Another thing is, that aroma compounds are in relatively minor quantity in the spirit.

A fellow chemist told me as well, that pure ethanol is not tasteless! It is quite pungent and sharp… only the dilution and the addition of aroma (if it comes from minor natural impurities or additives) makes the drinking alcohol “tasteless” - thats why “flavored neutral alcohol” are chemical cleaner ethanol as vodka, as the aroma alternate the alcohol smell…

When you distill ‘pure’ vapors do not exist, merely vapor with a predominance of the substance with the boiling point of the current temp.

A reflux still just makes the substance coming off MUCH more predominant than a pot still.

There are usually 4 ‘phases’.

Foreshots come off first, these are the highly undesirable fusel oils and methanol and are (or should be) discarded.

Heads come off second and are saved.

The main run comes next, this is mostly ethanol.

Tails come last (sometimes referred to as faints and tails).

These are saved,usually in small batches as the temperature rises. This is where most of the flavor comes from.

Heads and tails are then added back in varying quantites to taste. The remainder is thrown into the next batch (or saved and when there’s enough, run through their own batch by those in-the-know).

Many commercial distillers remove the foreshots, take the heads, main and some tails in one go then add the next batch to the remaining hot liquid.

Pure ethanol is, in fact, tasteless (fire water) so gin is the nearest thing to commercially pure booze you can get. Vodka makers allow just enough tails through to distinguish their product.

Happy drinking…

Mulling it over, I think you are right. I would certainly agree that Scotch, the resulting liquor from distilling barley mash (wash), is not vodka. Moreover, no matter how long one aged vodka in charred bourbon barrels, it would become be Scotch. Obviously, something more than just pure ethanol must make it through the still to give a good single malt all of the subtle qualities one can discern. I stand corrected.

may I disagree?
Only Bombay Sapphire [as volume brand] and very few others are using the vapor infusion!

Most of the other gin producer wether cold infuse, or warm infuse (means leave the botanicals in the neutral grain alcohol while distilling).

Alcohol has indeed a boiling point of 78ºC - though you don’t take only the spirit of ONLY this temperature [you might separate the heart on a lower temperature till a slightly higher temperature] and the aromas are also coming through at mentioned temperature…

I mean, this is the idea of all multiple distillations…

Ethanol has a specific boiling point of 78.29 C/173 F. All distilling takes place at this temperature. If the resulting liquor (i.e. vodka) is infused with botanicals, it becomes something different: a liqueur, such as Jägermeister. If you then boil the liqueur at the boiling point of alcohol, you simply get pure alcohol, which, theoretically, would again be vodka, no matter what you started with.

If, on the other hand, you first boil the alcohol, and the steam-like vapors flow up through, and dissolving the essential oils from botanicals, the liquid that condenses would be something unique.

If, instead, you infused the vodka with the botanicals, then again distilled them, I don’t see how you would wind up with gin. You would just have vodka, distilled from all impurities once again.

The true difference between “cold infusion” and “gin head infusion” lies in whether the heat of the vaporized alcohol (at 78.29 C/ 173 F) is enough to release other volatile compounds, or whether the longer term infusion of the cold method adds something to the mix.

Please set me straight if I’m missing something here.

I appreciate your statement that you were only going to use spices available at your local grocery store; however, should you have a desire to follow the model of Bombay-Sapphire, a reliable on-line source for some of the more exotic spices lies in your own backyard. Mountain Rose Herbs (www.mountainroseherbs.com) is based just outside of Eugene, in Pleasant Hill, OR, and sells eight out of the ten aromatics listed by Bombay-Sapphire. Only the Cubeb pepper and Grains of Paradise are lacking from their product list. Of course several of the more mundane ingredients, such as almonds, dried lemon peel, coriander seeds and cassia, are readily available cheaper around town. Cassia is simply a cheap form of cinnamon. (See the Wikipedia articles on cassia and cinnamon for clarification. I was disappointed to discover that Trader Joe’s “cinnamon” is, in fact, cassia.) Search for Cubeb and Grains of Paradise on Amazon.com to find on-line sources, such as Blessac or ChefShop.com. These may also be available at your local Indian market.

Thanks for the Gray Kangaroo link JB.

I’m trying essential oils too and so can ‘mix’ small amounts.

I plan to distill some of these as well and see what happens to the flavors.

The list of oils to play with is humungous (follow your noses and instinct).

Remember a weak flavor is cheaply remedied, an overpowering one may be UNFIXABLE.

Stainless holds scents, so do redistilled gins. I use glass to minimize this.

The Carteret still is really 2 stills, the first produces the raw extract into the botanicals container(s, 2 so you can switch without stopping production) and the heat from this process drives the second distillation.

The best method is too double distill your raw alcohol beer and then soak/steam/oil with a third distillation and a final additional of any oils best not ’steamed’.

Happy heebie-jeebies all.

So you’re not the only one making Gin without distilling!

*Reference

I macerate and filter, it works just fine. I think the macerated stuff has a much richer flavor than the double-distilled.

I’m making a holiday likker for some of my friends this year. The spices smell great together so I have high hopes. Vodka infused with vanilla beans and roasted/crushed almonds and a few knots of cloves. Add honey to sweeten and water down to 60 proof. Mmmm buddy.

If you want to make your own vodka at home from sugar and yeast, you should probably check out brewhaus dot com. It runs me $1.50 for a fifth of good vodka made at home.

Maybe we should just make our own?!

Sure would like to see one, so I could know what an authentic Casino or Deep Sea Cocktail tasted like!

…I read it in several books and also have it from a “spirit expert” that London Dry Gin has to come from Neutral Grain Spirit - however I didn’t found a proof, yet.

Besides, here in Dubai there is still the 47% abv version around, so no complaints on my side about the strength.

Now the new (and old) big thing is arriving: Old Tom Gin! Did you heard already something about it in the States?

Cheers!

Dominik MJ

Thanks for the kudos and the information. However, I’m finding all kinds of conflicting info about Bombay Sapphire.

In fact, on page 86 of Michael Jackson’s Bar & Cocktail Companion: The Connoisseur’s Handbook, he says:

The base spirit for London Dry gin may be distilled from grain or some other raw material such as molasses, but it will have been rectified to neutrality before being redistilled with the botanical flavorings in a pot still.

So I don’t know… Bombay is owned by Bacardi, no?

And: I don’t think, that the vapor infusion is cheaper - however it is much more controllable, than maceration! However the botanicals cannot be for ever in the vapor stream and if you have to clean the pot or the basket makes for me not the big difference…

But it is easier to operate a quite regular distill apparatus than to have a special one (for maintenance etc.).

Hm - about the alcohol source: as Bombay Sapphire is a London Dry Gin, the alcohol HAS TO BE NEUTRAL GRAIN SPRITIS - so Jeffrey - no molasses allowed here!

I still maintain, however, that this method is cheaper and faster than the more traditional methods.

I was trying to wrap my brain around combining a column, or continuous, still working with a gin head basket tonight while I was at work, so I did a little research.

If I understand it correctly, Bombay uses a column still to generate their neutral spirits (from molasses, apparently - I had no idea) and then they use what’s called a Carterhead still to flavor the gin with their ten botanicals one final time. There’s a picture here.

I hope I got this right…

Jeff