[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi Helen

Can you send me a photo of the leaves – not all varieties are rich in EO. You can keep the leaves whole, but on a small scale, it is still better to chop them up. I suggest packing them in the still with some twiggy bits. If you imagine hot steam going into them, it may be that they clumped together and formed a plug, not allowing the steam to go through, hence your oily, scummy water. The steam would be condensing and going back into the pot. Pack the leaves with the harder twigy bits to make pathways for the steam to go through.

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi Jan

I’ve made several commercial gins using oyster shell. You put it in the pot with the alcohol. Two on a 5L should be fine. The shell adds a dry minerality which also works well with a hint of seaweed.

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi Helen

Pleased you are enjoying the courses – the one on alcohol is very much an intro course as there’s quite a lot going on when we are distilling alcohol 🙂

If you are distilling a second time, we recommend you repeat the process, taking out the headshot. In small distillation, the transitions between the different alcohols are blurred, so take more to be on the safe side. On your second distillation you can expect a 20% yield as a guideline and at double the abv which you start out with. So if your abv from your first distillation is 40%, expect 80% on the second distillation. You have some leeway as you make it for perfume and not for consumption.

A 5L still is small for alcohol, but use it to practice and get to know what to expect.

 

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi jackie

Good day for playing with aromatics! They both have citral in common, which is different from limonene, which actually doesn’t have a very strong citrus aroma, whereas citral does. I describe lemon-like scents from plants as herbal citrus. I like to use both as fresh botanicals if you can get them. So, on our blending scale, you would use .5g dried, but if you like the lemony character, go to 1 or even 1.5g. Double it if you are using fresh.

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi Jan

We use a sharp vegetable peeler as it’s the best way to get the peel without too much of the albedo (the white pith). As they are quite moist, they must be dried in a warm, dry place. We use these types of dryers: https://herbals.co.nz/products/drying-rack-large with a convection heater to below it. It’s important to have a warm airflow moving through the peels as they are very moist. I prefer this to the commercial dehydrators, which I find overcooked. They will need to be brittle to ensure the moisture has gone. Otherwise, they will go mouldy.

Yes, so the same with any fruit. Remember that a dried aromatic is not the same as a fresh one, so treat them as individuals in their own right.

 

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi Jackie

If you are using 40% it only takes a day for the colour to come out. Then you have a concentrate.

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi Steve – no, not at all as long as you are OK with the quality of both.

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi The tails will undoubtedly affect the mouthfeel and taste. Feel free to redistill and retake the cuts, both the headshot and the tailshot. Even though you may lose some yield, I think you will be surprised at how much better and, as you say – refined it is.

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi Tarsh

Yes, run the condenser for the rye flour run, you need to cool that distillate back down. But as you have seen—don’t run the condenser for just a sanitizing steam clean run.

• This reply was modified 3 months ago by Jess at The Alembics Lab.

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi Steve (see my comments in the text)

hi there. I’ve completed a gin run this afternoon and my yield is pretty average. I’m running a 5L column still. I started with 3.125 litres of neutral spirit (this one is not cloudy). I think if you used 4L in a 5L still, you would get a better yield. 

 

and finish with roughly 725ml of gin between 83-75%. I pulled 50ml for the heads and 75ml for the tails, so 850ml in total.

For this still I think 80% is a good place to sit. However, if whats coming after that still has taste and character, I keep going to 75%

If your neutral spirit is clean – meaning its been well distilled and had the heads taken off, you only really need to take a headshot from a small still if you dislike the taste and smell.

I switched off the heat source (electric plate) when the temperature hit 96 degrees. My heads started to appear around 78 degrees. For the main part of the run the temp increased from 82-92 degrees over an hour and a bit.

As most of the alcohol comes over in the first part of the distillation – as you say, it’s delivering at 78d – this is mostly high-proof alcohol and lots of terpenes from the botanicals. As you progress, the water content becomes higher in proportion to the alcohol. Turn the heat up to high to get some energy into the vapours to get it across. I think this is where you are losing your yield. When the distillate slows down, don’t be afraid to increase the heat. I suggest getting from 50 ml or 100 beakers and taking small fractions. This way, you can taste when it’s becoming more diluted with water, but also that the aroma and taste are good. Your distillation will be finished when its literally a watery vegetative character coming out. This can happen quite quickly, hence the 50ml fractions are a good learning for when it does happen and you can then just get rid of that fraction without ruining the whole batch.

I put the juniper, coriander, Angelica and liquorice in the pot with the school and then my other botanicals in a pouch in the column.

Thats OK

I stopped at 96 degrees, thinking that it would be water vapour coming through.

yes, but with some nice tasty tails, which, when blended with the higher % of alcohol and terpenes, you get the beginning to create interesting complex flavours.

Is this yield normal? If it’s under expectations, any suggestions on how to improve the yield?

I hope your yield improve with the suggestions above. Let us know how you go.

Thanks as always.

 

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi Jan

Try just putting your dried botanicals in the pouch. Its really just to keep the fine bits from falling through the sieve plate. Lay your fresh herbs on top of the pouch.

 

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Rochana, you are right, and that’s something we should remedy! They are a pain to clean, for sure. We clean ours using 96% alcohol. If you don’t make your own alcohol, you can use denatured alcohol, which you can get from Pure Nature or isopropyl alcohol. The oils are extremely low polarity which means they won’t move with water. Boiling water and detergent are helpful, but high-strength alcohol is the easiest option. It also sanitises all your glassware.

be mindful when you are handling the separator as the narrow tube on the bottom is the most vulnerable part.

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi Jan

Colour is always post-distillation. You can infuse the flowers in the gin once it is made or make a concentrated infusion and add it by the drop until you get the intensity of blue you want. I prefer this method as I then have more control. You can infuse 5g of flowers into 250ml of 40% alcohol to get a strong blue concentrate.

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

The seeds are the best to use in this instance. I lightly toasted them to release the oils. To a litre of spirit, you can use up to 5 grams. You could try drying the flowers and using them as well. [Sorry, just edited this to say ‘lightly’ toasted, instead of highly!]

• This reply was modified 3 months, 3 weeks ago by Jess at The Alembics Lab.

[Jill The Alembics Lab]

Hi Jan

Oh dear – we all can get a bit over-enthusiastic when we start thinking we can just add more of something we love. It’s the best way to learn – easy to recognise when we have gone too far, and then we know to pull back.

If you distil it again, the flavour will be more refined, but it may still be citrus-forward. What you could do is use it as a blending gin. If you make one that isn’t citrus-forward, you could add this to it. That’s quite fun.

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