Imbibist

Not unlike starting your own business, making your own booze is completely illogical in this modern world. The job market is ripe with safe, well paying positions with decent benefits and little risk, even in this economic environment. Likewise, your local Liquor Store is flush with an incredible array of well formulated, refined, and time tested alcoholic products. It takes a unique and bizarre individual to want to make homemade booze, and I am one of those nuts.
 

Bathtub gin was a necessity during the Prohibition, not so much today. I chose to make gin for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I like gin. A lot. Second, gin production does not require distillation. Indeed, gin is essentially a specialty infused vodka, and while fine gins incorporate multiple distillations, it is possible to make a basic gin without a still. Given I do not have a federal license, or a still, or access to a federally licensed still, infusion is the process I chose.

Ingredients for the basic gin recipe: Juniper Berries, Coriander, Cinnamon, Cardamom, Lemon Peel, Aniseed, and Grain Alcohol. Store bought booze in the background.

Note that the goal here is to not create a world class gin on the first try. Given I chose the infusion method, this is patently impossible. The goal is to make something that can pass as gin. Baby steps.
 

Nearly every major gin producer on the planet buys neutral grain spirits as the base ingredient. That’s right: buys. Hence, you can cut me some slack for doing the same. I chose the hottest variety I could find here in California, Everclear 151 proof grain alcohol. Yeah, the same liquid fire you dreamed of acquiring when you were seventeen. This choice would prove questionable later.
 

Next I was tasked with procuring the basic herbal ingredients: lemon peel, angelica root, cardamom, cinnamon, coriander seed, and the predominant ingredient, juniper berries. I was able to find all of these except angelica root. This is not a huge loss for a first run, since angelica root is a minor ingredient. Aniseed was available, though. Since aniseed is used in some gin recipes and I’d like to make an anise flavored liqueur in the future, I picked some up and used it in lieu of the angelica. This, also, would prove questionable later.
 

The recipe I had for simple gin was written for an industrial production of 1000 liters, using 190 proof spirits as the base ingredient. As illustrated above, I was dealing with a 750ml bottle of production moonshine and a few handfuls of botanicals, so an Excel spreadsheet was necessary to scale it down to a nano-production level. After carefully measuring out the ingredients using a digital food (read: illicit drug) scale, I put all the ingredients and the spirits into my infusion vessel, a retired 1.75 liter Bombay Sapphire bottle. Then I parked it in the closet for a week. Here ended Day 1 of a 14 day process.
 

Over the next seven days, nothing exciting took place, save the daily agitation of the bottle. However, as each day passed, the liquor became darker, eventually reaching a brown tone similar to a light whiskey. Store bought gin has no color — not even the bottom shelf crap found in a destitute North Las Vegas packaged good store — so this could certainly turn off some folks.  The smell, however, was distinctly gin. Which is good.  Maybe my friends will sample this with me after all.
 

On Day 8, the time came to stop the infusion process and dilute the liquor to a drinkable strength.  Using cheesecloth, I strained the mixture into a pitcher, removing the botanicals from the liquid.  After multiple filtrations, the mixture was diluted to drinkable strength of 94 proof (No surprise: calculating the volume of water to add also required the Excel spreadsheet).  This is where things got weird.
 

I fully expected the dilution to lighten the color of the gin, which I welcomed.  The lighter the color, the more it would look legitimate.  However, I wasn’t expecting the liquor to cloud.  Yes, it clouded, turning it into a yellowish-brown slurry that could turn off even the hardest booze addict.  Here I realized I wouldn’t be selling this commercially, and was wondering whether anyone would even be willing to test it with me.  Perhaps it was the anise, which always clouds when water is added (think Absinthe Drip). Or perhaps the crude filtering method left plenty of micro-sized solid particles suspended in the liquor. I don’t know, except my bathtub gin now looked like ass juice. The taste, however, was surprisingly good.  It tasted like gin.  Harsh gin. Filthy, ugly, dirty lake-water gin. But gin nonetheless.

The final product. Unfiltered on left, filtered on right.

In order to allow the flavors to balance out, I parked the bottle in the closet for another week, gently agitating it once a day.  Day 14 finally came, time to taste the final product.  Originally, I planned to serve it straight from the bottle.  Given the harshness of the liquor, however, I decided to filter it first.  Using a standard Brita water pitcher, I ran the gin through the filter six times.  Somehow – and I have no idea how – the finished product came out darker than the non-filtered version. But the process worked, as the filtered gin was noticeably smoother than the unfiltered. OK, “smoother” may be a stretch. Perhaps “less harsh” is more accurate.
 

Despite the ugliness of the final product, I was able to find some volunteers to taste it with me. All the testers were pleasantly surprised. No one mistook it for anything other than gin, with regard to both smell and flavor. Everyone agreed it was harsh, but drinkable. One critic stated it is at least as good as the $12 house brand you get at the supermarket (too bad it cost more than $12 to produce). I agree on all levels. I also found it a bit heavy on the cinnamon, which isn’t a terrible thing, but something to consider in the future. Given the goal of this project was to make something that passes as gin, I have to call this project a Success. However, it leaves much to be desired. A higher quality base spirit would certainly improve the taste, and a better infusion method could help with the color. Bathtub Gin No. 2 will become a reality, but for now, I need to finish off this bottle of murky yellow No. 1.