Description
Jill Mulvaney from The Alembics Lab leads a small group through a comprehensive range of spirit-making techniques and teaches us to make our own bespoke blends. (Suitable for both beginners and experienced distillers).
*Single day ticket-holders will receive a complimentary online Foundation Distillation Course of their choice (valued at $175).
**Weekend ticket-holders will receive a complimentary Foundation Course Bundle (all three foundation courses, valued at $450).
All our online courses come with lifetime access, so you can refer back to them whenever you need, making them a great learning resource. Feel free to explore your online course before or after your workshop with us.
Saturday Workshop Schedule (10am–3.30pm)
DAY ONE—Base Spirits. The foundations of flavour: neutral spirit, brandy, macerations and tinctures.
- Start the day with Jill’s favourite sparkling lacto-fermented herbal drink, with herbal honey and hydrosol.
- How to make high-quality neutral base spirit for gin, botanical spirits, tincture, quintessences and perfumery.
- Washes, stripping runs and spirit runs: Jill Mulvaney demonstrates each of these process, using raw ingredients and pre-prepared washes so we can gain hands-on experience at each stage.
- Includes preparing a wash (with recipes and step-by-step instructions), conducting a stripping run, and the final spirit distillation including taking fractions and making cuts.
- BREAK FOR LUNCH
- Distilling brandies and eau de vie. Using wine as our wash, we’ll set up and run a brandy distillation. Includes taking fractions, making cuts and discussions on double-distilling and usage.
- How to use the techniques of maceration and tincture for bitters and liqueurs.
- We’ll finish the day with a tasting of our day’s distillations.
Sunday Workshop Schedule (10am–3.30pm)
DAY TWO—Blends, and the art of building and balancing flavour. Includes making and working with quintessences (single botanical extracts), creating bespoke blends for botanical spirits, bitters, and aromatic drinks.
- Distilling quintessences: how to build your own flavour library of single botanical extracts. Using a 3L copper appliance still and our own neutral base spirit.
- Flavour explainer—we select a hero botanical for our botanical spirit and conduct a guided tasting of this ingredient across a spectrum of extracts. (Inlucdes raw material, infusion, tincture, quintessence, hydrosol and flavour essence).
- How to make your own aromatic bitters using our macerations, tinctures and ingredients from the Lab.
- BREAK FOR LUNCH
- Botanical spirit: How to structure your blend—Jill walks us through her process for creating a well-balanced blend for new botanical spirits. Includes how to use a basic blend ratio that’s based on botanicals’ intensity, as well as building and balancing flavour.
- Distilling our botanical spirit—we demonstrate the process of vapour-infusion to create a new botanical spirit showcasing our blend.
- Build your own Apéritif. While our spirit is distilling you can use the elements we’ve made and the Lab’s library of extracts to build your own aromatic drink.
- You can take home sample bottles of everything prepared during the Masterclass.
Getting here: Ferries depart from downtown Auckland, and take approximately 45 minutes. If you are not staying on the island, we recommend an 8am ferry to arrive in plenty of time. You can easily bus to the venue—public buses depart from the ferry terminal at Matiatia. All three buses (50A, 50B and 502) will get you here—just ask your friendly driver which stop to get off at to get you to Moa Ave.
Lunch: The Lab is an easy 10 minute walk from the shops and cafés of Oneroa Village.
Can’t make your booking? Get in touch and we can help you out. You can view our cancellation policy here.
