Homemade Gin Kit

A homemade gin kit was one of the most interesting Christmas gifts that I received this year. It was a super surprise, as it arrived in the mail unexpectedly from some extremely thoughtful friends in Texas. I didn’t even know that such a thing existed! Although it makes sense. From all my distillery visits - especially Waypoint Spirits and Berkshire Mountain Distillers - I learned that gin starts with the same base liquor as their vodka and then is infused with a special proprietary blend of herbs, spices, roots, twigs, and other natural fodder. Juniper berries are always in the mix; however, other than that, it’s basically distiller’s choice. Which is what makes gin so interesting to me, and why I’ll always take a gin and tonic over a vodka tonic any day.

According to the kit instructions, it would only take 36 hours to turn a bottle of vodka into two smaller bottles of gin: 24 hours to infuse the juniper berries, 12 hours to infuse the botanical blend, and a few minutes to strain and funnel into new bottles. Of course, when do I ever follow the instructions to the letter? Because I wanted to be able to experiment with my homemade gin over the weekend - and because the continuing professional education lectures were wearing on me - I decided to start the project on New Year’s Eve. And it took me all of two or three minutes to pry open the tin of juniper berries, funnel those into the bottle of vodka, seal and shake the bottle, and stow it in a cool dark place. At that point, I kind of wished I had bought a bottle with more head space in it because there seemed to be so little space in the bottle for the juniper berries. I was afraid that I would have to pour some out to make room for the botanical blend!

The next day, about an hour late, I retrieved the bottle from its cool dark place and gave it a good shake. The juniper hadn’t changed the color of the vodka, but I was not sure whether it was supposed to. According to the label on the tin, the botanical blend contained allspice, bay leaf, coriander, green cardamom, fennel seed, lavender, lemon peel, rose hips, rosemary, and tellicherry black peppercorns. I could clearly identify three or four small bay leaves and one rose hip, so I picked those from the tin and stuffed them into the neck of the bottle. The rest of the blend was either small berries - like the coriander and peppercorns - or fairly well ground. So I added all that using the metal funnel to prevent losing any of it. Once everything was in, I sealed up the bottle, gave it a few good shakes, and stowed it back in its cool dark place.

Of course, I wasn’t about to wake up at 215am on my first day back to work in order to strain the gin according to the instructions. So I let it sit, thinking that I would strain it after work. But that didn’t happen because my work day had gone topsy turvy on me. It wasn’t until about 415am the next morning that I remembered to strain the mixture into the two clean bottles. True to the instructions, the resulting gin was a golden yellow color. I suppose if I had bothered to filter the gin through a coffee filter, it might have been less colored; however, I didn’t have the presence of mind or the time to do that in the wee hours of the morning before work.

The Verdict

I still haven’t had the chance to taste my homemade gin. However, I am thinking of throwing a little gin tasting party in the near future. I have a specialty bottle of Ethereal Gin (Batch #14) from Berkshire Mountain Distillers and a bottle of the standard Batchers’ Gin from Litchfield Distillery that I intend to compare to my homemade creation. I just haven’t decided on when it will take place, and what drinks are on the menu!