peterhobit wrote:You have lost me a bit BT1 when you wrote "Definitely for London/Dry's need the caddy in the up stream to avoid any discoloration" what do you mean here? Caddy is before the reflux condenser? or before the product condenser?.
I was thinking the caddy would be after (on top) of the RC so you can go back into full reflux to change the botanical s in the caddy.
Hi Peter, the botanicals should be in the upstream part of the still as there is a lot of heavy yellow oily stuff that drains back from them. You definitely don't want that in your final product. I have found that I get the best result using a 90% or more neutral that I dilute to 40% for the gin run. I don't want to muck around with heads and tails when doing a gin run as you might be throwing out some really good aromatics. It's the ol' baby with the bath water thing.
I don't use a reflux still for the gin run, just a modified pot still with a 100 mm section to place the dilly bag of botanicals which is the last bit of upstream before the condensor take off point. The gin head is mounted on a 600 mm length of 2 inch copper pipe with no packing. Sorry about the lousy picture, I just took it with my old phone.
This way the nasties all fall back to the boiler. It's really interesting to sample at different times of the run. At first the citrus comes through really strongly while the more woody stuff like the juniper berries predominate later.
For a Hendricks style rose infused gin it is safer to separately steep some rosebuds in the 90% neutral and add a teaspoon or two to each bottle afterward. I'll experiment with rose in the botanicals when I am not too desperate for the next batch. :drool:
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