Gin: It Does A Body Good

[nonelvis]

I think I mentioned a little while back that I was going to try making gin, but I never reported back. The results: FANTASTIC. Making gin is trivially easy, and we're now on our second bottle of the stuff.

Here it is steeping:



That's a fifth, so next time, I think I'll get a couple of bottles and just fill the jar.

We tried it first with regular-proof vodka, but as the house gin is Bombay Sapphire (94 proof), 80-proof gin felt a little weak in a martini. This second batch was made with Smirnoff's 100-proof vodka, and is somewhat smoother.

I started off with Serious Eats' recipe, but made a few minor modifications to suit our taste: no lavender, and I added some black peppercorns. For 1 bottle of 100-proof vodka, I used:

3T juniper berries
1.5 chamomile teabags
1 big strip (about 6") grapefruit peel, and the same of lime peel
26 peppercorns
1.5 bay leaves
3/4 t coriander seed
5 crushed cardamom pods
6 allspice berries

Steep the juniper in the vodka alone for 12 hours, then put everything else in and steep for another 36 hours. Strain and enjoy (and trust me, you will enjoy).

Comments

[kass]

We've made various kinds of bitters (there's an orange bitters which is basically our household staple) but we have never tried making gin. But wow, now I think we might have to, because that looks awesome.

[nonelvis]

I've been meaning to try making bitters, and my husband is especially fond of orange bitters! Do you have a recipe you like?

[kass]

We started out with this one from Saveur, and that's still more or less what we do, though we've tweaked it a bit. For instance, we use whatever oranges we have on hand; sometimes we just peel them as we eat them, let the peels air-dry on a cookie sheet, and when they're dry, toss them in a jar and add vodka and the spices. It's glorious stuff. :-)

[nonelvis]

Thanks for the link! This looks almost as easy to make as the gin.

[arcanetrivia]

Isn't this kind of a cordial, since it's made by steeping things in vodka and not by distillation?

Bombay Sapphire is 110 proof? I thought it was 90 proof. (Although looking up pictures of the bottle, I'm seeing 80 and 94... confusing.)

[nonelvis]

D'oh! I always get Sapphire's proof wrong. You're right; we've got the 94-proof stuff in the house.

And yes, technically, this meets the definition of a cordial -- but so does gin, which doesn't have to be a fully distilled product as long as it's flavored with juniper (at least, according to the EU and the US). I usually think of cordials as sweet, though, which this gin is not.