8675309 Gin-y

Rob Masters is interviewed to continue the gin talk as well as discuss his new project The Family Jones. Various processes for making gin are discussed along with some more unusual styles.

Transcript

Colleen Moore: 0:00

You're listening to Distilling Craft episode(11). 8675309- Jenny. Today, we're going to be talking with Rob Masters from The Family Jone Distillery with large footprint all over the state of Colorado including locations in Denver, Loveland and Breckenridge- Colorado.

Podcast Promo: 0:22

Distilling Craft is brought to you by Dalkita, a group of architects and engineers who specialize in designing craft distilleries across the U.S. More information is available at our website www.dalkita.com.[ d a l k i t a.com]

Colleen Moore: 1:00

Hello everyone. Welcome to Distilling Craft. I'm Colleen Moore. Hey, just a quick thing before we start today's show- while we're hard at work, lining up new interviews and producing new shows, and you are so kindly waiting on us, we're going to reissue a couple of our episodes from season(1) with some previously unreleased material mixed in. We revisit episode(11) with Rob Masters from The Family Jones Distillery. Later are part time radiogenic distiller DJ is going to talk with us about the history of gin and different ways to make it. Welcome to the show Rob.

DJ for Dalikta: 1:16

Rob Masters is currently the head distiller and partner at The Family Jones Distillery. They have a distillery up in Breckenridge as well as one down in our coming soon in Denver. You started off working with the Boulder Spirits Co., renting a corner of their distiller in making Rob's mountain Gin. He was able to then sell that to spring 44 distilling down in Colorado Springs, and then actually went to work for them for about four years. I'm making it for them and getting to work on his recipes. While there, he actually has one of the cooler stills I've ever seen, it's a glass column still. The idea behind it is that he is able to extract pure flavors from the botanical without any impact from copper or the metal. It's also much easier to clean, so he can remove his botanicals from that or his botanical flavors from the still much easier, so great cleaning and a very pure extraction. After his time at spring 44, he actually has been working as a consultant working for a variety of startup distilleries, helping them develop recipes and work on their flavors. An unusual thing about Rob's new distilling venture is that he's actually split it into two separate DSPs. He has the large production facility up in the mountains where he is able to make whiskeys and his gin. And then, he's got a smaller production facility down in Denverhood that functions as his tasting room. But, it's still a true DSP where he's able to make a lot of the smaller spirits that feed his bar, his liqueurs and core Joel's, and then do a lot more experimentation spirits down in there. It's really an interesting blend. One thing I thought was unusual is, in Colorado in particular, you're only allowed to own four breweries before the state steps in and says,"Hey! That's too many production facilities". This happened with Breckenridge brewing, a handful of years back and when they wanted to add their fifth brewery, they actually had to do some consolidation to get down to four rather than being able to open the fifth. I don't know anybody who's running to that role with distilleries yet. Apparently, Rob hasn't seen anything on the distilling side either. The larger production facility, the focus is mainly on making whiskey. There he's making a bourbon as well as a rye. I know you capture what the current demand spirits are. One of the interesting products that Rob is making in his Denver tasting room in order to flush out that bar is the vermouth light product. So as everybody knows, it's not allowed for distilleries to make vermouth because it is technically a wine, so in order to get around that and make all the cocktails that require vermouth, particularly in Colorado where you can only sell your own products behind the bar, distilleries have had each had their own fight to come up with how to make vermouth. In Rob's case, he's taking NGS or a neutral spirit and diluting it down, then adding botanicals that represent the flavor profile of vermouth, then adding wine into that spirit in order to help give it some of that wine flavor. It's an interesting way to make vermouth that I haven't quite run across before and so it's enabling him to really expand his cocktail opportunities there at the distillery. Another interesting point about his large distillery is that, rob is actually using it to make his own NGS. The stills there are large enough that he can get a cost competitive NGS made internally rather than having to buy it. And this NGS then can be a base for his liqueuers and obviously his Gin. And for somebody who really likes a neutral base profile to great advantage to make that in house.

Speaker 3: 4:59

One of the complexities of having two distilleries and being one head distiller is being forced to run back and forth between the two facilities to ensure that product is being made to your specifications and everybody's staying on top of their jobs. I guess the Nice thing for rob is that, he's had experience before with a very successful product and managing a staff below him. So he's been able to set it up with good people who know what they're doing. And his job has been mainly quality control, and less about having to babysit and make sure everything is just doing what they're supposed to do, or worse trying to do it all himself.

DJ for Dalikta: 5:39

To give you an idea of how large Rob's distillery in the mountain is, he's actually going to be putting away about three barrels a week. This certainly isn't anything on the order of Jack Daniels, but for a craft distillery, it's a very large amount to be able to start storing. One nice thing that Rob's previous experiences allowed him to do was he designed his mountain facility first about doing a grain in product, and not only just a grain in, but a grain in rye and bourbon product. This is enabled him to really tailor his process for those grains, and enable him to get the right mill and move his grain in and out of his process fairly seamlessly. He can also then use the space for his NGS, and it really allows him to have great control. Since rob is distilling on the grain in his distillery, he's actually chosen not to use a direct fire still for his whiskey, and is instead using a steam coiled still. This enables him to not worry as much about burn on, but still get; although, the flavor control that he needs. Since rob is most famous for his Gin, one thing he's done at this new facility, particularly since he has a bar in Denver, is he's broken his gin down in two categories. He's got not a lower end, but a less complex gin as well as a higher end, more complex Gin. By having this breakdown, he's been able to create heaven and affordable price point. What he's done basically is eliminate some of the botanicals to create a simpler process with the higher end Gen. And not only does he have a bigger juniper push, but he he has 11 botanicals in there and he distills these with four different distillations, doing the juniper initially in the liquid phase, then adding in the other botanicals through the vapor phase. This enables him to blend on the back end and say,'"Today, my orange was a little bit light, so I'm going to add more of the orange spirit and create the right flavor profile", but rather than doing it in the compound style, he's doing it as a distilled style, and then blending the multiple distillations. With the glass still and trying to distill one flavor at a time, how many botanicals are you typically running, say for Rob's mountain?

Rob: 7:58

Well, it depends on what the end goal is. I talked about Jones House gin, a little bit ago and I want to keep that simple so that has five botanicals in it versus Rob's mountain Gen, it's been awhile since I've made it, so I have to think back. I want to say there were 11 different botanicals in there. I think, at some point, you can get a little too crazy and it's really hard to balance, let's call, let's say 40 botanicals. So, it really depends on what the end product is. If you're looking to make a nice, simple London dry style, I think tanqueray has three botanicals in it. So, it's hard to argue that you can keep it simple and still have something pretty classic.

DJ for Dalikta: 8:47

With the 11 different botanicals, is that 11 different distillations? Or are you combining some of them up and doing three different distillations?

Rob: 8:56

Yes. The development phase, it is all single distillates that then are blended together. The way that I like to make gin is in two separate distillation. So when distillation of just juniper, and then a second distillation of the botanical mix. The reason I do that is that juniper is the most important part of making Gin. I mean, that is what Gen is, it's a juniper spirit flavored with other botanicals. I always want to make sure that our juniper profile is doing what it needs to do, and playing nicely with the other things. And to do that, I distill it separate from the botanicals, so that I can adjust up or down the juniper level, and let the other botanicals do what they need to do. If it's a London dry style, of course there's going to be more juniper there. If it's a western style, there's going to be a little less juniper. That's how I typically make Gin.

DJ for Dalikta: 9:54

That makes sense. Have you done any playing around with vacuum distillation? We were talking to a couple episodes back how rose and cucumber can get destroyed with a high temperature of standard distillations, and so vacuums can be a way to extract some different flavors.

Rob: 10:10

Yes, I have a rotovap is actually on order. Rotovap is my next toy. I've played with a rotovap a little bit. I've never actually had one in a facility that I've ran, so I haven't spent a ton of time with it. But, certainly, vacuum distillation is a really cool step towards creating all sorts of flavors that you just can't do in a standard still set up. The other factor when you're talking about rose or cucumber or whatever is whether you distill a liquid phase or ش vapor phase, I call it, so liquid phase would be just throwing the botanicals in the pot with the neutral, and whatever it is you're distilling it with or hanging in a basket and having the neutral in the pot, turn it into a vapor, and blow through those rose petals. I've had better experience distilling things like flowers, like rose petals in vapor phase than in liquid phase. So it just doesn't beat it up quite as much when you distill it and vapor phase versus liquid.

DJ for Dalikta: 11:17

That makes sense. Are you doing any of your distillation in the liquid phase? The juniper, for instance?

Rob: 11:22

Yes, juniper isn't liquid phase. And I'd say 90% of all my botanicals are in liquid phase, and then just a handful of the very delicate things like rose petals are done in vapor phase.

DJ for Dalikta: 11:34

So I assume you have a dedicated gin still in your large production facility.

Rob: 11:41

We don't yet are still in Denver, actually, is, I wouldn't call it a dedicated gin still, bu the majority of our botanical distillations are going to happen there in Denver. it's a beautiful, 700 liter Carl, with a gin basket on it, you can run it, you can keep it away from a column where you can run it through the column if you want. That is going to be our gin still. We'll also make other things on it too.

DJ for Dalikta: 12:07

Are you handling cleaning it after the general, particularly when you're doing the distillations in the liquid phase, are you?

Rob: 12:14

Yeah. Caustic soda, PVW from Fivestars, just amazing staff, so I'll do a rinse of PVW for a while, run a closed loop through, hit all the copper. And then we'll take that out, rinse it with water, and then do a run a citric just to shave off that very minuscule amount of copper and regenerate it. I haven't found a whole lot of problems with flavors sticking behind and the still after a good caustic citric run.

DJ for Dalikta: 12:46

That's certainly my preferred cleaning system. Are you seeing any reaction with the caustic and your copper or anything like that?

Rob: 12:54

No, I haven't. I think, I'm fairly conservative with my caustic. I don't like it super concentrated, so I don't put a ton in just enough to get the job done. I'd prefer to spend more time running a closed loop caustic than less time with a more concentrated caustic. So, I keep it fairly watered down.

DJ for Dalikta: 13:18

That makes perfect sense. I know historically that gin has always been an NGS space, either purchased or made in house. Have you ever done any experimentation with other bases, either rum or maybe looking at something like a malt base, like a Jenever style?

Rob: 13:40

Jenever style is certainly something that I'm super interested in. I remember touring, anchor, distillery- it had to have been eight, nine years ago now at this point, a lot of time ago. They had a malt wine fermentation where they put the juniper berries into the fermentation. I remember looking into this fermentation and saying,"What all these little blue specs?" And figuring out it was juniper berry. Ever since I saw that, I've always wanted to try that. So that's one of the things that's fairly high on my list of things to do in our Denver facility. Our R&D facility do some Unilever style distillation with a malt wine, malt base. I've never played with using rum as a base or Agave spirit or anything like that. It's really all been neutral. It doesn't mean that I don't think it'd be good, I think there's definitely some opportunity there, but maybe I'm a purist in that regard.

DJ for Dalikta: 14:38

The main reason I'm asking about rums, I know in the course the rum base can add a little bit of perceived sweetness to the spirit, and I wasn't sure if it's doing that for gin.

Rob: 14:50

Makes sense.

DJ for Dalikta: 14:51

There's a bunch of different ways to make gin. What are your opinions on some of the more mass rated styles, either doing a maceration of your juniper upfront and then distilling it, or doing more of like a compound gin, or just adding those flavors through maceration after distillation?

Rob: 15:12

I think that it's hard to get the general public on board when they see something with color in it. It doesn't mean that it's bad, that it tastes bad. Doesn't mean that it's the wrong way to do it. I just think that you can't necessarily be standing there when Joe Public is standing in the liquor store aisle looking at all the gins, and they see a yellow gen next to a bunch of clear ones and say,"Why is that one yellow? I'm not going to buy that." So, that'd be my first concern, is getting the color out of it. My next concern would be consistency. At least when you've read distilled the botanicals, you have a better idea as to what flavor you're going to get as opposed to you put one batch of orange peel and basscerated for x number of hours while you go through that batch of orange peel and you've got to order more and maybe the orange peel from your suppliers coming from a different place and they're more potent. Well, it's a little harder to keep the consistency when you're macerating things than it is with distilling. So, that would be my other concern.

DJ for Dalikta: 16:25

That makes sense. So that's why you're creating an orange distillate, and then blending it together, rather than having a botanical pile and a little bit of that B orange.

Rob: 16:36

Exactly.

DJ for Dalikta: 16:37

Just to circle back to kind of weird gen, something I haven't been seeing or I haven't seen on the market, but I've been thinking about lately is slow gin. It's not that hard to make, it's got a great history. Have you been playing with it, Do you know anybody who is?

Rob: 16:54

It's on my list, it's something that I'd love to do. The folks at Spirit Works in California are doing amazing sloe gin. It's on the market in Colorado, so you should go look for it, it's really, really good stuff. My experience with sloe gin is that it's really hard to find sloe berries, because they come from the UK and there's a lot of people making sloe gin over there, there's a huge craft spirits renaissance happening over there, particularly in gin. And, I think that they're buying up the majority of the sloe berry stock. I think, I remember seeing that there was some on Canada at one point, but it's been a year or so since I've looked. But, when I did look last, it seemed like it was really hard to find sloe berries. That's certainly something that's on my list of things to have fun with someday, but not anything I have any plans on doing anytime soon.

DJ for Dalikta: 17:53

It's a little bit out there, but at least now that I know there's one producer, I'm going to have to go check them out.

Rob: 17:59

Yes, I think, Sipsmith has one too. They're out of the UK, but they have a sloe gin as well. And then there's always Plymouth, Plymouth gin, has a sloe gin as well.

DJ for Dalikta: 18:11

The next thing I wanted to ask you about, were"Virgin Oils". Either chill filtering on the back-end, or maybe you're running a Carter style head so you can collect them separately. And then you either add them back into your spirit or not? What are you doing with your oils?

Rob: 18:26

Well what I do is, if I have oils showing up in a final blending, I know that I don't have enough neutral in there. So if I take my distillate and thin it out with neutral, particularly with juniper berries, juniper can be stretched a long, long way. So, if you have 1 part juniper distillate and 1 part GNS, you could actually stretch that from 1 part juniper distillate to 16 parts GNS, after distillation, and stretch out those oils, so that they don't come into solution, in bottling. So that's how I handle the oils, I really haven't had much problem with it.

DJ for Dalikta: 19:11

I was wondering why you were thinning it out, but I've heard that before so it makes sense. I guess I just don't spend enough time making gin. So, the last thing I want to talk to you about was"Barrel Aged Gin". There's a bunch of different types out there and I was wondering if you're going to be doing a gin aging program, along with your whiskey aging and the rest of it.

Rob: 19:33

Yeah. Specifically in Jenever, I think a nice barrel aged Jenever could be really amazing. I made an Old Tom Gin at Spring44 that we put into toasted American oak, basically new make Chardonnay barrels, that was delicious. So I certainly think that there's room for experimenting with barrels. I'm a huge fan of single malt whiskeys that are finished in Sherry Casks, so I'd love to do some gin finished in a Sherry cask. So absolutely, doing some barrel finishing, you can't call it aging per the TTB, but barrel resting of gins is something I'm super interested and excited about.

DJ for Dalikta: 20:14

It sounds like you're talking mainly used barrels, is there any..?

Rob: 20:19

No, not necessarily. The Old Tom Gin from Spring 44 is new toasted.

DJ for Dalikta: 20:23

Yeah. Sorry about that.

Rob: 20:27

That's all right. They are basically Chardonnay barrels before Chardonnay went into them. They're made for aging Chardonnay, but they were used for aging Old Tom Gin. I think my personal opinion in taste is that, I don't know that I would love gin aged in a bourbon barrel. No. 3 char, 53 gallon bourbon barrel, I think that's probably a little too much wood for my liking, when it comes to gin. I like more delicate things like a toasted oak, or used Cognac barrels, or something like that. That would be my preference to stick towards the lighter end of barrel aging than the heavy char wood flavor.

DJ for Dalikta: 21:19

Are you generally leaning toward shorter barrel aging? Are you thinking like three to six months?

Rob: 21:25

I think Jenever probably has enough power to stand up to something a little bit longer, like two, three, four years. To do a standard neutral base gin in a barrel, for longer than six to twelve months, I think it would be a bit much.

DJ for Dalikta: 21:43

What are you looking to pick up from the barrels? If it's a used barrel, are you looking to get the essence of the previous spirit, or are you trying to just get a reduced barrel profile? And with new barrels, are you looking to get that vanilla caramel, or are you looking for some of that tannin bite?

Rob: 22:00

Yeah, Vanilla butterscotch. A little bit of smoke, but not a ton of smoke, not like whiskey smoke. But yeah, vanilla and butterscotch. And then certainly if it's a used barrel, you do want to get some character of whatever was in there before, whether it's Sherry or Port or Chardonnay, whatever. I think it's important, that if you're using a used barrel, you should have some of that essence in there.

DJ for Dalikta: 22:28

I'm not sure we can really do a gin episode without talking about tonic. I've read some comments from you in the past, that you're opinionated on your tonic. So, what is a good tonic? What makes a great tonic?

Rob: 22:43

Some that's nice and well balanced, not too sweet. I think a lot of the mass produced tonics are corn syrup, and bubbles and tonic flavoring. So, something that's got a good quinine bite to it; just a decent amount of bitterness, not too sweet, but nice and balanced. So I think that that's important. If you're going to spend a bunch of money on a nice bottle of a well made gin, you might as well spend some money on good tonic too, and not just get the corn syrup sweet and stuff.

DJ for Dalikta: 23:19

Awesome. Thanks again for coming on the show.

Rob: 23:22

Thanks for having me.

Podcast Promo: 23:25

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Colleen Moore: 23:39

A special thanks to Rob Masters for taking the time to talk with us today. Up next, our team distiller and his lecture on the history of gin and different ways to make it.

DJ for Dalikta: 23:51

So gin is not my favorite spirit, but I think it's something that most craft distillers are starting off making. And so it's a great thing to talk about, particularly the different ways to make gin so that you can look at how to set up your distillery to make it effectively, or to see how it can fit into your growth plans. So basically it breaks down, there's two types of Gin. We have"Distilled Gins" and we have"Compound Gins". For some reason, compound gins have always been perceived as a lower quality than distilled gins. I don't know if I agree with that, whether it's through maceration or through addition of flavoring elements. I think, you can do a lot of flavor control in a compound gin. Basically, being able to add exactly the flavor you want and the exact amount you'll want, has a lot of benefits to me. And then you can always do your dilutions, either with NGS or spirit, and then water to get it dialed in exactly where you want it to be. That being said, distilled gin certainly takes a whole lot more skill than than compound gin, because you basically have to get it right through the still as opposed to getting to play with it in the lab and dial it in that way. I don't perceive a difference between the two, but you certainly need a good lab and a great palette to do the compound gins. Historically, gin has an interesting life. It actually started off as a Dutch spirit, Jenever. And basically what it was, was a malt base that they added crushed juniper to, and then that was fermented and then distilled. basically, it was a mix between scotch or malt whiskey and juniper flavor. Over time, as this particularly moved into England, they got rid of the malt base and switched over to, it's still a grain base but an NGS, a pure base of vodka base. And then they were adding the juniper flavor either through a maceration prior to distillation and then distillation, or doing a compound like I was talking about earlier. The interesting thing about the London dry style, which is basically what the Jenever ended up turning into, is that it's a very simple type gin. Typically we're talking three to four botanicals, obviously juniper is the king, citrus tends to be the number two node in there. And then it has changed as it's moved over to the west, and we've seen a lot more complex flavorings, a lot larger botanical loads, and then juniper disappears as the primary flavor. It's still there, but it's not nearly as powerful as it is in the London dry style. Another interesting thing going on in the gin world that I don't see a lot of people talking about is, Germany actually has its historical gin spirit as well. And basically what they did there was actually crushed and fermented Juniper Berry. So the whole thing was done, from the beginning, with juniper, and now they're calling that Steinhager. So that's something that I think we might start seeing more of is, people are looking for ways to differentiate, is trying to bring over say the German style of Gin. So with London dry, there's generally four flavors, like I was saying. You've got Juniper, you've got Coriander, Angelica, and then your Citrus that is your lemon orange peel. Those four core flavors go through all the styles of Gin. Obviously, there's some balance on the three that aren't juniper, that may change out and get replaced with other flavors, but those four definitely the most popular. How are we actually making gin? The first thing to talk about is the absorption of those flavors. Now, we've decided what our flavor profile needs to be, now we need to look at how we're going to capture that. We've obviously talked fairly extensively considering how little it's used, about vapor distillation and using that to capture some of the more delicate aromas. The next way to look at it is, other ways to capture this. Most people look at distillation as two ways. One, you can capture it in the vapor phase. So, what we're doing here is we are distilling our spirit, and then those vapors are traveling up through our still, either through a gin basket or over to a carter head, and they are able to extract the different flavors from a botanical blend. The other way to do this is to actually put that botanical blend into the still directly. By allowing those flavors to kind of sit together, you will get some leaching out of the botanicals and the flavor will get in there. This will also create a much stronger flavor. So if we're talking about a compound gin, this maceration will be done on the backend. If we're talking about a distilled gin, this maceration can be done on the front-end. If it's done, it's typically only done with very hardy flavors that you can really extract a lot of, because you're going to lose some of that flavor profile once you distill it. Typically, again, we're talking about your bittering agents, juniper being the primary one, if you're using it. I've also seen some of the cinnamon bark stuff that give a tannin bite as well. Put in on the front end, that way they can lose that bite after distillation. There's two ways to do that maceration. You can either do it cold, and put it in there, let it soak for a day or two, then strain it, and distill the liquid. Or you can actually put that bulk botanical into your still itself. A couple of pluses minuses here. If you're doing it cold, it's going to take longer to extract the same amount of flavor. You also then have to come up with some way to filter it, unless you're going to do both a cold and a hot. If you're doing hot, you have a lot larger cleanup to do. Basically, you're going to be boiling those juniper berries and that's going to break them down and create a musher, a sludge in the bottom of your still that needs to be cleaned out. Plus you, basically, are getting a hundred percent extraction on the oils, and those that don't get distilled are going to coach your still, and so cleanliness is going to be a lot harder, or I should say be the hardest on a hot mass aerated gin. So from there, we've got our vapor. So generally speaking, there's two ways to do vapor extraction. You can either go through a gin basket which is hung directly over the pot of your still, or we can go through a carter head which is hung off to the side of your still and allows the oils to either run back into the pot or not. I certainly am a fan of the Carter Style and I prefer the oils to not run back into the pot, both from a cleanliness perspective and from a controls perspective. I think if you can capture those oils, you can either add them to your gin at the end to make it more flavorful. You can add it to bitters and whatnot to help your bar out. There's a whole lot of things you can do with those oils, once you capture them on your own. But as I alluded to earlier, I tend to lean towards the compound gin, so you can do a little bit more lab work, most people don't agree with that. There is one other way to extract flavor from our botanicals, and it was certainly done more back in the day than it is done now. And that's a percolation system. So in percolating, basically what we're doing is we're allowing the liquid to boil off, create that vapor, then it condenses and runs back down through our botanicals. That liquid then hits the water or wash, boils again, and continues running through. This is a leaking cycle. And so obviously, this is most famous now as a way to make coffee, but it is also a very effective way to make gin. Like I said, not seen as often, but I think it's cool if somebody was using a percolator to make their gin. Now that we know how we're going to extract our flavors, the question is what do we use to extract those flavors? We need to look at how those flavors are absorbed into our spirit. If you think back a couple of episodes to our conversation with Henrik, what he was talking about, is there's only so much flavor that can actually be absorbed into your palette into your brain. So if you have more than that, you're just wasting money on putting that botanical in there, once you've passed that upper sensory threshold. So you need to watch how much flavor we're putting in there, and what that absorption rate looks like into your spirit. The other end of this is to look at, what you can do to maximize that absorption. So some flavors absorb very well into high proof spirits. Other flavors need a lower proof and need some of that water to get the extraction into the the water phase rather than the ethanol. And so the easiest way to do this is to do your maceration at a very high proof. Most of those bittering agents, juniper and whatnot, have a very good absorption into ethanol directly. And so if you do that cold maceration at 95% ethanol, you can really absorb a lot of flavor, faster than you would if you diluted it down. On the other end, when you're looking at your hanging baskets, they do better at a slightly lower proof. Typically what I recommend is a charge about 60% ethanol. That'll get you somewhere in the 80 to 90 range in your vapor phase, and just that little bit of additional water vapor will get you a better flavor extraction. So what you can do there is, do your primary maceration, your cold maceration at 95%. Once you get into the still, dilute that down to 60%, then distill that. That'll allow you to get maximum extraction, both from your bittering agents and from your aromatic agents. That is the typical way to do it. Generally when you do that system, you're going to be looking at about 80% ethanol for your heart's cut on the back-end. If you get too much lower than that, you're going to be getting some tails; even though depending on how you make gin, there really aren't tails, but just kind of some funky flavors coming out of your botanicals, and much higher than that, you're not seeing the flavor compounds coming through. So obviously, if you're distilling your gin to say, 95% ethanol, you didn't pick up a whole lot of flavor in there, considering you started at probably 96%. So that is that window that I see, you get down below 75 and it's just a really, really funky gin. You get over about 90 and it's just too pure, you're not seeing any flavors in there. The next question is"The Base". We've decided what flavors we are going to pick up. We've decided how we're going to pick up those flavors. Now the question is, what is our base and our medium? Obviously back at the beginning of this, we talked about the history of Gin and Jenever, and so a malt base is very historically accurate and it adds a lot of cool depth of flavor to your gin. It's also not the style that people expect, your London dries and your western style gins are much more common. People expect that pure and clean base, for the botanical store really play off of. If you're doing that, we're definitely looking at a minimum, vodka hearts or NGS levels, to extract it out and give you the purest palette you could hope for. The next from that is using your base to give you flavor. One of the ways to do this, most typically, is with a grape base, basically making brandy. A grape or a fruit base, in general brandy, will give you an additional fruit boost to your botanicals after distillation. So if you're not using apple in your botanical blend, but you use an apple based spirit, you can still have that apple essence make it through to your final product. The other way to look at this is with a rum base, rum adds sweetness. So if you wanted a little bit sweeter gin but you didn't want to add 1% or 2% sugar to the back-end, you can use a rum base, a sugar wash, in order to increase the perceived sweetness of your gin. The base is what allows you to add bonus material to the botanical blend. Obviously, you can go really far and say all the way back on episode two, Sean Smiley is using a Tequila base for his gin. And so that hard Agavi fermentation really comes through in the final product and makes his gin very complex, but it also makes it less of what people perceive as a gin when they taste it. So looking at your base, the question is always, what do you want it to taste like in the end? And there's a million different ways to do it in between, and those are just a couple that I've seen that do some fairly cool things.

Colleen Moore: 36:31

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