Hi Sophie, it is definitely possible to make your own base spirit, and this is the natural next step that arises for many gin-makers. Jill can tell you more about this (and I’ll leave a lot of the details to her, especially about how you go about buying small quantities of neutral spirit in NZ, and what licenses you need) but if your goal is to make high-quality, high AVB neutral spirit at home you will need a different still from the column appliance you’ve mentioned. We use reflux stills like the SS Explorer with a column attachment (often with copper scrubbers) — as when you’re making neutral spirit for gin you want to have an (almost) blank canvas, and reflux refines and concentrates the spirit. We are currently working on a neutral spirit course for The Alembics Lab and hope to have it up and running by the end of this year — it will look into using grains, sugar washes and other ferments too, so you can find out what you want to use as your base. But in the meanwhile Jill will have some more information for you.
