Late summer blends
Here’s the latest in our seasonal gin recipes, it’s a blend created from working in our summer gardens—spanning endings and beginnings. We’re using those final leaves and blooms alongside fruits that are just emerging. Lavender, green citrus from budding trees, spices and a whiff of fresh garden mint come together to make a heady and floral gin that’s ready for long evenings of summer sipping.
These sorts of blends are ideal for hobbyists and home distillers. With our small stills, we can take advantage of what’s to hand—especially those botanicals that are fleeting and fresh—and enjoy a gin that’s a bit out of the box.
A special note on lavender: There are A LOT of varieties out there, but make sure you use a variety of Lavandula angustifolia, (formerly L. officinalis) which is commonly known as English or common garden lavender.
Late Summer Harvest Gin recipe (35g per/1L of neutral spirit@40% ABV)
*For distilled gin (gin flavouring runs)
- Juniper (Macedonian) 8g
- Juniper (Himalayan) 7g
- Coriander seed (NZ) 5g
- Angelica root 2g
- Liquorice root 2g
- Cassia bark 1.5g
- Pink peppercorns 1.5g
- Freshly dried lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) 1g
- Fresh green lemon peel 3g
- Nutmeg 1.5g
- Orris root 1.5g
- Common garden mint 1g
Total = 35g
Tasting notes: A contemporary botanical gin with a robust juniper and citrus character, with underlying layers of florality and spice.
You’ll notice this blend has a higher proportion of Himalayan juniper than most, which will contribute a more dry, mineral, piney quality. If you’d like a gentler (and even more floral blend) you can move the Himalayan down and increase the Macedonian. The relatively high percentage of juniper (both Macedonian and Himalayan) in gin blends give the drink its definitive ‘gin’ quality, but if you want to experiment you could leave the junipers out and make this as a botanical spirit (that’s worth a try!).
We’ve also lowered the amount coriander in this blend, as we have enough linalool in the lavender—no need to overdo it. Coriander seed has a high percentage of linalool which has a soft, musty-spice aroma.
Being rich in monoterpenes, this blend will have a robust nose (and flavour) and will benefit from aging a couple of week before you dive in. They will shine through a good tonic on a summers day and will impress your guests—if you are willing to share, that is.
*All our recipes are for distilled gin— also called gin flavouring runs. To learn how to distil your own gin using these recipes (and more) we recommend our Gin Immersion Course. All courses come with automatic membership to our forums, for questions, experiments and further learning.
This sounds amazing. I am confused though. Are you redistilling the neutral spirit with these botanicals or are you infusing a liter of natural spirit with the botanicals?
Hi Lora,
Yes, this is a recipe for a gin flavouring run – which is exactly what you say – re-distilling the NS with the botanicals either in the pot (macerated then distilled) or for putting in the basket/column of your still and steam-infusing. At The Alembics Lab we usually steam-distil our gins, so these botanicals can be put in the basket of our 3L appliance still, and then the NS goes in the pot, and the flavour run (steam distillation) will take place. The result is our summer gin.
As for quantities, we usually express these in a ‘grams per litre of NS’ to keep the maths simple—so people can easily calculate what they need for their volumes of NS. Just doing 1L, even in a small still (3L) is less efficient than doing 2L in the same still. So we usually distil 1.5-2L in this sized still to get the best/most efficient yields. So we’d usually do 70g and 2L runs in our 3L appliance.
Hi, what percentage alcohol is your neutral spirit, Cheers
Hi John, 40%ABV for the neutral spirit – that’s the highest percentage you want to put through a still. If you are distilling your own NS, then proof back to 40% for this flavour run.