SW4 is a small-batch London Dry gin that is created in batches of about 500 litres in the smaller stills of Thames Distillers in Clapham. The main still used is call “Tom Thumb” which sits next to his sister “Thumbelina” – very cute.

SW4 named after the postcode of the distillery.

There are 12 botanicals which are macerated for 12 hours before being distilled in a single run; SW4′s botanicals are…

• Juniper
• Lemon peel
• Orange peel
• Coriander seed
• Cinnamon
• Cassia bark
• Angelical root
• Orris root
• Liquorice root
• Almond
• Nutmeg
• Savoury

The water used is, in sharp contrast to Martin Miller’s Gin, common London water that has been deionised and filtered.

SW4 Gin

SW4′s bottle is square and topped with a pressed metal screw cap. The cap an labelling are matt charcoal (very dark grey, to you an me) with silver and metallic-blue accents. The label declares it as 40% ABV.

Uncorking (or unscrewing, as the case may be) and giving the neck of the bottle a sniff reveals not a lot in the juniper department. There is definitely a creamy quality to the aroma, but otherwise it is undistinguished. It is a similar story in the glass.

Sampled neat, SW4 carries the promise of the aroma into the mouth. The taste is lacking in Juniper and heavy on a smooth, sweet creaminess. There are hints of floral elements but they are hints. There is a spicy burn in the after-taste which is quite pleasing and the citrus is definitely there.

I was slightly disappointed with the levels of juniper in SW4 – everything I have previously read led me to believe this was a big hitter in the juniper department, but I just don’t see it. To me, this gin carries a middling payload at best.

In a G&T, SW4 is somewhat lost in the standard ratios. At 1:4, and even 1:3, the gin seems dominated by the tonic water and the experience is very lack-lustre. Taking it a few steps stronger (1:2.5 and 1:2) the gin really begins to shine. The sweet, floral complexity of the roots (angelica, orris and liquorice) really starts to come through and that distinct smooth creaminess of the neat spirit starts to make a reappearance. The juniper is still middling but it is supported nicely by the barest hints of nutmeg and a fair back-bone of citrus. However, I couldn’t find almond anywhere, no matter how hard I looked and the peppery taste of savoury was utterly lost to me.

I am always wary of gins that need mixing with tonic in in stronger ratios, as it tends to disappear fast – it becomes a more expensive bottle due to the fact you need to use more of it. However, as an occasional treat, SW4 Gin is certainly worth it – just remember to mix it strong in a G&T to avoid disappointment.

At £18 – £21 per bottle, this isn’t the most expensive gin, but I was expecting more. I occupies that odd middle-ground between the standard and the premium gins and it delivers in the same way. There is enough there to set it apart from Gordon’s and Beefeater,  but doesn’t quite have enough to compete with Sipsmith or Tanqueray. I was hoping that it would be more like Brecon Gin, in that it was a cheaper gin but competed firmly with the more premium labels, but alas, it was not the case.

Anyway, this is what I went with…

Gin & Sin

• 2 oz Gin
• 3/4 oz Orange Juice
• 1/2 oz Lemon Juice
• 1/2 oz Grenadine

Method: Bang it all in a cocktail-shaker, with ice, and give it a shake. Strain into a martini glass, or over ice to serve.

This is probably more grenadine-heavy than the majority of recipes, but I made a bottle of home-made grenadine some time back and find little use for it, so I thought I would go with the heavier option.

I made this with Martin Miller’s Gin and the resulting drink is intense in flavour and absolutely silky. I used a good deal of Gum Arabic in my grenadine, so it gives a great mouth-feel and Martin Millers is a silky smooth gin. The citrus intensity is balanced by the sweetness of the grenadine and underpinned nicely by subtle hints of pomegranate and rose. The gin gives it just enough back-bone to string it all together – I would like to see what this tastes like with something like Tanqueray.

This is a pretty simple and effective cocktail; well worth trying.

Anyway, I had all of the ingredients and it looked interesting, so I thought I would give it a go.

Intro to Aperol

• 2 oz Aperol
• 1 oz gin
• 3/4 oz freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/4 oz simple syrup
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• Twist of orange peel, for garnish

Add the Aperol, gin, lemon juice, simple syrup and Angostura bitters to a cocktail shaker half-full of ice. Shake and strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a twist of orange peel (flaming optional).

I actually put slightly more lemon juice (maybe 4/5 oz) and in hindsight, could have used a little less than 1/4 oz of simple syrup. This isn’t that surprising as it is a cocktail for people not used to bitter drinks, so modify the proportions to fit your tastes.

This cocktail strikes a good balance between sweet and bitter. It’s incredibly fruity and gives mountains of citrus with hints of spice and juniper – very refreshing and drinkable. This will be cracking on a summer’s evening.

It is a rare thing (in my experience, at least) to see a cocktail with Aperol as its prime ingredient, and I am very pleased with it. I will definitely be making some more of these.

Sources vary as to whether this has black pepper in, and the exact proportions seem to be hard to come by, so I have done my best to piece it together.

Without further ado, I give you…

The Number Four

• 6 Whole Cardamom Pods
• 12 Black Pepper Corns
• 2oz Gin (Tanqueray)
• 1oz Lime Juice
• 1oz Honey Syrup

Crack the cardamom pods and black pepper (I used a pestle and mortar) and add to a cocktail shaker. Add the honey syrup (1:1 honey & water), lemon juice and gin; shake. Pour into a glass over ice.

Lacking a single lime in the house (I know, a bit remiss of me) I used lemon juice.

I thought this was going to be a monster of pepper and cardamom, but it turned-out to be quite subtle. The sweet/sharp balance is good and the gin is not dominated, nor dominant. All in all quite a good, simple drink.

I ended up adding a splash of cardamom bitters to perk mine up a bit, but this is because I was expecting a lot of cardamom and was disappointed when it wasn’t there.

I would be tempted to distil some cardamom and pepper distillate for this drink, as its only down-side is gritty lumps of cracked-spice floating around in it.

It caught my eye because it was the colour of rose quartz. Once my attention was momentarily drawn by the colour, I was intrigued to see rosé wine as an ingredient. It isn’t every day you see wine as a cocktail ingredient and with plenty of rosé in the fridge (the other-half likes it), it should be quite simple to make.

Cheeky Rose

• 2oz gin
• 2oz rosé wine
• 1oz lemon juice
• 1oz honey syrup
• Rosemary sprig

Muddle rosemary leaves in lemon juice and honey syrup in a cocktail shaker. Add the gin, wine and some ice and give it a good shake. Pour into a tumbler over ice and garnish with the rosemary.

It’s an odd drink. Initially it was very pleasing, but the more I drank, the less balanced it became. Starting out as a balanced, dry cocktail with a great deal of fruitiness and hints of sweet honey, rosemary and juniper. Half-way though the drink, the different components started dominating each sip; one would be dominated by honey, the next by lemon, then wine, then rosemary. Maybe that’s why the original recipe was half the volume.

Still, an interesting experience.

Wrong!

Ice and lime

This is so far from the truth that it has long surpassed Jeffery Archer or Tony Blair and rammed itself firmly into some sort of racial memory of misguided logic. At least everyone knows politicians lie – the “Ice Fallacy” is so insidious and deeply entrenched that nearly everyone believes it.

But, times are changing. An army of people, led by the great drinking minds of our time and equipped with the cold, hard edge of science are charging head-long to vanquish this Usurper of Truth, who hath bought us naught but tepid, watery drinks. We have established a foothold and now it is time to expand and conquer the endless masses of the beguiled.

Okay, I am going to get a grip now, and lay the melodrama aside for the time being.

There are several factors that make “good ice” and I am going to explore some of them here.

But first, what makes “good ice” good? Well, you can use ice in different ways. When used in a cocktail shaker, you are looking for slightly different outcomes than the ice you drop in your glass. As an insatiable G&T aficionado, I am only going to consider the sitting-in-your-glass use; in this format, ice has two jobs; these are…

1)      Making your drink cold.

2)      Otherwise, not altering the overall experience of your drink.

The so-called “good ice” will do both of these jobs well.

Incidentally, in a cocktail shaker, you are actively looking for dilution (just a controlled amount), and if shaking, you might be looking for a texture or appearance change too.

The Water

Water

Okay, this is probably the most obvious. If your water tastes like crap, your ice will taste like crap. Got lots of chlorine in your tap-water? Your ice will have lots of chlorine in. For six years, I lived in a house that had had its own borehole and the water was pure and sweet – unfortunately, this spoiled me something terrible and I could smell the chlorine in ice cubes made with tap-water. Drinking in pubs was a real problem for me.

But it is not just chlorine; there are loads of chemicals that are added to tap-water and they do impact upon the taste. It is amazing how you get used to drinking crap tap-water too. When I moved away from my house with the borehole and into a place with mains water, I nearly gagged when drinking from the tap – now I barely notice. However, if you are going to the trouble of sourcing good ingredients for your drinks, why drop in nasty ice to cool it down? What’s the point in using Martin Miller’s Gin, blended with the finest Icelandic glacial melt-water, if you are just going to add tap-water to it, in the guise of ice?

How far you actually go in solving the water problem is really up to you. Here are a few tips…

• Buying bottled spring water is probably a good start. It will have all sorts of mineral impurities in, but not all impurities are bad, or affect the taste. Choose one that is good value and tastes good.

• Boiling tap-water will drive off the more volatile impurities (like chlorine) and get rid of a lot of the other dissolved gasses (more on this in a bit).

• Passing tap-water through a jug/cartridge filter will take out a lot of impurities and improve the flavour. This will take out a lot of the dissolved solids which may end up with you having flat-tasting water.

I would steer clear of buying deionised or distilled water for your ice – while it will make “good ice” in a mechanical sense, drinking water treated in this way can strip the body of minerals. Too pure isn’t good. Icelanders refer to deionised water as “Dead Water” because it is flat and lifeless. There is a balance to be had and neither extreme is good.

Mostly, I would recommend boiling the water first. If you have particularly hard water, then you might want to filter as well.

The science of cooling

Melting ice

Okay, this is where it might get a bit intense and nerdy but do persevere, as it’s fascinating stuff.

There are two mechanisms that ice uses to cool your drink. The first is a very basic concept that seems like common sense; the ice is cold, the drink is warm – the ice absorbs heat energy from the drink.

Simple, yes?

Well, not quite. There is this strange thing that some materials take more or less energy to heat up. One gram of water takes 4.18 Joules of energy to heat by one degree (Celsius or Kelvin) and one gram of ice (at -10^oC) only takes 2.11 Joules of energy to heat by one degree. Incidentally, asphalt only takes 0.92 Joules, which is why the road is always really hot in the sun. These numbers are called the Heat Capacity of a material and all materials heat at different rates.

The good news for imbibers is that ethanol has a much lower Heat Capacity; 2.44 Joules per gram per Kelvin. Alcohol takes less energy to cool and heat than water; the stronger your drink, the easier it will cool.

So, were you to take 100g of ice at -20^oC and pour over it, 100g of water at 20^oC, you will end up with a 200g of water at 10^oC (eventually), not ice floating in 0^oC water. Well, that would be true if it were not for the second mechanism at play.

Ice, it turns out, doesn’t just start melting when it reaches 0^oC. It actually takes quite a lot of energy to break that ice-crystal lattice apart. In fact, it takes 334 Joules of energy per gram to melt water ice – this is called the Heat (or Enthalpy) of Fusion. This is an additional requirement to the energy required to heat the material; so if you take 100g of ice at 0^oC, it will take 33400 Joules of energy to melt that ice and end up with 100g of water at 0^oC (no temperature change, just a phase change). That’s enough energy to heat 100g of liquid water at 0^oC to a whopping 80^oC! Is that mind-bending or what?

Also, get this: Water actually gives off heat when freezing as well as absorbing it when melting. This principle is being used to develop passive air-conditioning systems for buildings, using waxes that melt just above room temperature (go read about Phase-Change Materials if you are curious).

So, our 100g of ice at -20^oC mixed with 100g of water at 20^oC will do something like this. The ice will warm quickly and absorb 4220 Joules of energy, reducing the temperature of the warm water to about 10^oC.  The ice then begins to melt; just less than 13g of ice melts, absorbing a further 4220 Joules of energy and the water reaches 0^oC, without the ice changing temperature at all.

It isn’t quite as simple as this; the room will be imparting heat into the water and there will be temperature gradients in the ice as well as convection currents in the liquid.

There is also another quirk that stretches beyond the limits of my knowledge; it transpires that ice at 0^oC can cool a drink to -7^oC in a cocktail shaker. What? You don’t believe me? Go read this mind-blowing article, complete with proper science experiments: http://www.cookingissues.com/2009/07/22/cocktails-the-science-of-shaking/

Weird huh? I could speculate about the reasons, but that wouldn’t be cricket science.

Okay, that’s the science bit over, time to look at what we can do with this knowledge.

The temperature

Cold thermometer

This one is pretty obvious.

The colder the ice, the more it will chill your drink before starting to melt, which is good. This isn’t the most efficient means of cooling, but it’s a start. My domestic freezer is set to -20^oC and this will suck out 10^oC from an equal weight of liquid water – more from an alcohol-water mix. The more you cool your drink before the ice begins to melt, the less you dilute your drink by melting said ice.

The shape

Ice from an ice-machine - with dimples

Novelty ice-cubes in fun shapes and those odd cubes with massive dimples that come out of ice-cube machines all have a much greater surface area than the humble cube.

Ice melts at the surface of the mass and the greater the surface area, the more ice you will have melting at any given moment. While this will facilitate cooling, little lumps and nodules of ice (say, the neck of the novelty guitar ice cube, or the funnels of your ice Titanic) will heat to 0^oC quickly and start melting before the temperature in the main body of ice has finished reached 0^oC. So you will cool by melting before you finish cooling by ice-warming.

Air bubbles trapped in your ice, when breached as the ice melts, will result in a huge increase in surface area and the lumps between voids will melt very quickly. Boiling your water before freezing will drive off most of that dissolved gas and make a clearer, solid cube, with a crystal lattice with fewer faults.

A sphere of ice is the ideal shape, but they are buggers to make. You can buy moulds for ice-balls but they tend to be fiddly and inefficient on space. The humble cube is a good compromise unless you are seriously going to town on your ice.

You can buy equipment to shape ice-sphere if you are flush with cash and have nothing better to spend it on (Here is one of the cheapest I have seen).

The amount

Lots of ice

There is some erroneous common-knowledge that putting too much ice in a drink will water it down too much when the ice eventually melts. This is pretty-much the opposite of the truth.

Ice melts when it warms to a certain temperature. There is only so much heat in your glass. The less heat each cube absorbs, the slower it will reach 0^oC and start to melt. Therefore, sticking loads of ice in your glass will see each cube absorb less heat and staying solid for longer, thus keeping you drink cold without making it watery.

If you stick two small cubes in a glass, they will melt pretty quickly and water your drink down more than if you had filled the glass with ice to start with. You will also end up with a tepid drink.

More ice means less melting.

The size

Big ol' cube of ice

Small ice cubes will suck heat out of your drink quicker than large cubes. This is because several smaller cubes have a greater surface-area for their volume than one bigger cube. There is more cold material in contact with your drink, so it will cool it quickly. Small ice is good for crash-cooling.

Larger ice cubes will cool your drink slower and therefore, more of the surface will melt by the time temperature equilibrium is reached and more of the cooling will have been achieved by melting.

However, once you have reached equilibrium, the larger cube takes-over in the efficiency stakes. Here, higher surface-area is a liability. You see, ice will be constantly melting at its surface; it is in a constant flux of melting and freezing. This is just the way things are when equilibrium is reached and normally the water freezes as fast as the ice melts (hence equilibrium). However, the materials in question are not the same. The ice is pure (ish) water and your drink is an alcohol-water mix and this freezes at a much lower temperature than pure water. In fact, a mixture of 40% ethanol and 6o% water freezes at -23^oC (which is why your whisky never freezes when “on the rocks”), so when water is liberated from the ice crystal, into the ethanol solution, it is much less likely to re-freeze back into the ice. There are concentration gradients that complicate this, but this is the basics of how it works.

So, even at equilibrium, the ice in your drink will melt and the greater the surface-area, the more will be melting.

Ideally, you would crash-cool your drink with small ice and then quickly transfer it over to large cubes. This is way too much of a faff for almost everyone who might be considered sane, so large cubes tend to win-out.

Conclusions

In short, big ice cubes in very simple shapes work best. Make them as cold as possible, use good quality water and boil the gas out. Use lots of it and they will cool your drink and keep it cold for a long time with minimal dilution.

I personally use Tovolo Perfect Ice Cube Trays, which are silicone moulds that churn-out chunky 1½ inch (38mm) cubes. They last well through a long-nursed drink and there is always plenty of ice left when the glass runs dry. They can be hard to find in this county and are usually quite expensive when you do find them – on ebay, it often seems cheaper to buy them from the US and get them shipped to the UK.

Tovolo also do a “King” model as well that makes massive 2 inch (50mm) cubes.

There are all sorts of moulds and trays out there though. There are some that create spheres (without the massive expense) – in fact, it is rumoured that the queen uses spheres of ice in her drinks as they clink less in the glass.

One last thing; now that you are armed with this knowledge, don’t be an ice-bore. You won’t win friends by complaining about the ice at their parties, or in bars, and people will think you insane if you bring your own – there are times when you just need to be grateful that there is ice in your drink at all.

Creative commons image attribution

• Ice and lime – by ktylerconk
• Water – by likablerodent
• Melting ice – by stevendepolo
• Cold thermometer – by wstryder
• Ice with dimples – by Andrew Mason
• Lots of ice – by Muffet
• Big ol’ ice cube – by seanmfreese

I’ve had a Liebig condenser kicking around the house for some years and I was convinced that I would find a use for it some day. I bought some juniper berries a few weeks ago with the intention of making compound gin, or bathtub gin, but why stop there? I scoured ebay and other sources of cheap laboratory equipment and, parcel by parcel, ingredients and hardware have been arriving at my door. Finally, today, the last piece of the puzzle arrived and I was good to go.

Macerating botanicals

I decided to try a half-bottle of the cheapest vodka I could find because, let’s face it, this probably wasn’t going to produce the best results on the first attempt. Researching gin recipes (mostly here: http://homedistiller.org/flavor/gin) I settled on the following as a starter-for-ten.

• 7g Juniper berries
• 3.5g Coriander seed
• 0.25g Cassia
• 0.3g Liquorice root
• 0.2g Orris root powder
• 0.2g Angelica root
• 0.5g Mixed citrus peel (fresh & grated)
• 0.2g Frankincense
• 0.1g Myrrh
• 0.2g Cardamom

I used mixed citrus (grapefruit, orange and lime) because, by some stroke of coincidence, I had no lemons in the house. The Frankincense and Myrrh are there because I was curious about what taste they would impart and had this strange idea about putting some gold flakes in it and giving it as Christmas presents, with the label “Nativity Gin”. For some reason, upon weighing, I doubled the quantity of Orris and Angelica I had planned on using.

There are some very precise measurements here and I purchased a pocket-set of very accurate digital scales from a head-shop on ebay. I weighed all the ingredients and cracked the whole seed and pounded the roots in my pestle & mortar. I slit each juniper berry with a knife too, to liberate more flavour. I added all this to the vodka and left it overnight to macerate.

Macerating botanicals

The next morning I began the maddening job of putting the distillation rig together. This was harder than I thought due to a few mismatches in tubing sizes. I ended up attaching the Liebig water supply to a garden hose and stepping it down in in size using a smaller hose, a copper pipe adaptor and some epoxy glue. The water was supplied by an outside tap, with the hose coming through the kitchen window. My wife gave me some funny looks.

Initially I thought to submerge the boiling flask in a saucepan of salted hot water, but a test run on 400ml of plain tap water revealed that this was a bit slow, so more direct heat was applied.

The macerated liquor in the flask looked distinctly like the urine of an ill, dehydrated man, mixed with a small handful of rabbit droppings and twigs; not exactly appealing at this stage.

Something I noticed was that the vodka took the heat and started boiling much faster then the pure-water test run. This is hardly surprising, not only does alcohol take less energy to raise its temperature than water, but it also takes less energy to break it from its liquid phase into a gas.

Introduction to Organic Chemistry

Another thing I noticed was that the filled flask was a lot heavier than an empty flask. This was no surprise, but it did threaten to topple the retort stand I was using to support that half of the apparatus. I was taking enough risks by boiling alcohol over an open flame without having unstable glassware, so I looked for something to weigh it down; what better than a twenty-year-old copy of Introduction to Organic Chemistry? A thick and weighty tome that formed a significant part of my university reading. Nothing would move under that.

The first few drops

The rig stabilised, the coolant-flow established and the flask filled with a rancid-looking fluid, it was time to light the gas and wait for the first drops of my own unique gin to drip from the end of the condenser into my ultra-sophisticated spirit-safe – a squat, square Kilner jar with sufficient capacity to hold the distillate and short enough to allow me to get the boiling flask close-enough to the gas ring so as to not have to have the flame too high.

And over it came.

I couldn’t resist smelling and tasting as the drops came through and its was certainly a journey of flavours. The citrus seemed to flow first, followed by the floral notes, then the more earth and woody notes. After this it seemed to mostly be slightly scented water. It was astounding to see a pure, clear liquid being produced from such insiped puddle water.

As the last 20% of liquid came through the condenser, it began turning cloudy. This is a sign of too much oil – the microscopic droplets not being able to be dissolved in the alcohol. Apparently it is also a sign of too much citrus. I knew I put too much citrus in, shortly after I started macerating. I put the peel in late in the maceration and all the recipes gave weights for dried peel; I guessed the weight of water in peel at about 80% and put five times the amount that recipes called for. The macerating liquor smelled strongly of citrus after adding, as supposed to gin like it did prior to the citrus.

Legging in the condenser

Another interesting thing was the legging in the condenser. When water condenses, it forms little droplets on the inside of the condenser. For the first half of the run, the condensing fluid formed little concentric ridges that I put down to the same mechanism that causes legs on the inside of your glass – I won’t go into the mechanics here as it isn’t particularly relevant.

It took about an hour for the run to complete and the residue left in the flask was brown and cloudy. I left about 50ml in the flask thinking that the majority of oils and alcohol would have come over by that point. To maintain the volume of finished product, I added about this volume of water to the liquor before the run; this was partly to compensate for the volume I intended to leave in the flask, but also I had read that boiling botanicals in 40%+ ABV hardened the skins and restricted the release of oils.

So, what was it like?

The gin was nothing like any other gin I had tried. The nose is very odd, definitely citrus with odd resinous overtones – possibly the two resins. There is little juniper in evidence on the nose.

The attack is sweet and intensely floral with a strong geranium-like flavour. The juniper comes in the middle palette with more floral flavours and heady resinous tastes. I definitely went overboard with the Orris and Angelica – these overpower the juniper.  The after-taste is has a slight burn of spice and citrus and echoes of the florals, but there is something lacking; it trails-off quickly and leaves a long, quiet echo. This is a gin of contradictions; it is intensely flavoursome gin but at the same-time it also tastes a bit watery and weak. The flavour is intense and powerful, but at the same time, there are holes in the taste.

Mixing with tonic was very strange indeed. For a start there was very little fizzing – maybe a symptom of all that suspended oil. The G&T was nice but there was both something missing (predominately juniper) and too much of other botanicals at the fore. There was also a surprising but distinctive taste of potent herbal cannabis. The geranium flavour makes it taste like I have used Fever-Tree Mediterranean Tonic Water.

This isn’t a great gin and I have a lot to learn, but for a first attempt, I am not displeased. It may also get a little better with resting.

Finally, a word on legality.

This is probably against the law. Don’t do this.

There are distiller’s licenses, rectifier’s licenses and compounder’s licenses. There are warehousing and plant licenses, rules about the size of barrels and bottles you are allowed to store alcohol in. You need different licenses depending on if you use duty-paid or duty-pending alcohol. The licensing laws are, quite frankly, Byzantine in their complexity.

I have used duty-paid alcohol and I have no intent to produce for anything other than my own personal consumption. I probably need a license to do what I have done today, but I would like to think that HM Revenue and Customs is more concerned with large-scale VAT and import duty fraud. If they really want to track me down and fine me the duty for the production of 350ml of gin, then I will pay my fine with a smile, chalk it down to experience and move on.

Technically you need a compounder’s license to make sloe gin and no one has kicked-in my door and confiscated my freezer yet.

I will probably keep doing this on very small scales, not to supplant purchased gin, but as a learning experience. There are too many commercial gins out there for me to give up on them.

Update 1

After a little time to settle, the first batch of homemade gin developed a slightly unpleasant, and more pronounced, after-taste. This was the flavour of the latter half of the distillation. In the meantime, I had done another batch with half the amount of angelica or orris root; this was better, in that it had a more balanced flavour that allowed more of the juniper to come through, but the gacky after-taste was even more pronounced as a result.

After a little reading, and a few comments under this post, I came to realise that only the heart of the distillation is bottled. So, armed with more knowledge and enthusiasm, I tried a third batch and sampled the distillate in roughly 12.5ml batches, discarding those that had unpleasantness about them. Interestingly, the initial part of the distillate had a lot of spice and citrus flavour in it, but it had some nastiness about it too, so I wonder how much of the spice and citrus gets thrown away. I stopped the distillation run before it became watery and riddled with unpleasant nastiness. The resulting gin was powerful and needed blending with more vodka, but it was a lot cleaner and very juniper-heavy – so much so, it reminded me of Oliver Cromwell Gin, especially in a G&T. Unsubtle, but not unpleasant.

For the third run, I macerated the juniper separately from the rest of the ingredients. The spice, root and citrus mix smelled wonderful, but the juniper developed a strong whiff of that nasty after-taste that I was working to eliminate. I do wonder if better juniper is in order – I just need to source some.

Update 2

My third batch of gin has sat on a shelf for a couple of months now. Initially, it was cloudy after diluting it down with vodka (I guess the dilution knocked some of the oils out of solution) but it has since cleared again. The flavours have integrated better and the juniper has come so far to the fore, that it is almost brutally juniper-heavy (almost a turpentine quality to it). Apart from this savage nature, it seems to have bottle-aged quite well. Life is a little hectic at the moment but I still want to try a fourth batch with better quality ingredients to see if I can apply lessons learned.

I think this nervousness has also been amplified by my thoughts on Plymouth Gin; so many people herald Plymouth as a tremendous gin but I found it a little dull. Maybe there is something I am missing, maybe there is a complexity of flavour that my taste-buds are blind to, maybe my curry-ravaged palette only responds well to the less subtle gins. Whatever the reason, I was afraid I would have to stand up, in front of the whole internet (well, the few that read this little corner of it, at least) and say that I think everyone’s favourite gin is over-rated.

Well, an email in my inbox last week forced me to confront these fears head-on; the Reformed Spirits Company asked if I would like to try Martin Miller’s Gin. Who can turn down free gin?

I was away on business when no less than three packages arrived; along with two bottles of gin (Martin Miller’s and Martin Miller’s Westbourne Strength) there was a copy of the Martin Miller’s Brand Book. Entitled “Love, Obsession and Some Degree of Madness”, it is a glossy little hard-back book, crammed with information and colourful pictures.

The book is scattered with images like this, often contrasting the traditional with the modern. I found this one to be inexplicably and amazingly pleasing.

The book contains the story that led to Martin Miller creating his gin, and it’s almost a creation myth in the legendary sense. The scene is set with three friends in bar, unenthusiastically sipping sorry excuses for G&T. You can almost picture the drink; an inadequate amount of ice quickly melting, lime that has been cut for too long and its skin yellowing at the edges, Schweppes or (even worse) Britvic tonic water and so little gin, you can barely make out its presence under the aspartame. Martin then embarks on an enthused rant about making his own gin, with proper traditional methods, decent botanicals and (at great length) using Icelandic water. His enthusiasm is amplified by his friends’ almost torpid responses. It’s the beginning of a quest almost worthy of the sagas.

Anyway, this is supposed to be about the gin, not the book. I will say this though: it is a great read, with not only the history and production ideologies of Martin Miller’s Gin, but information on the Eastern spice trade, Icelandic folklore, a modern history of gin, and nearly two dozen cocktail recipes contained within its slim binding. It is also packed with quotes from Martin Miller and a good helping of scorn – he doesn’t seem to be a man who suffers fools (gladly or otherwise).

Martin Miller's Gin

So, yes, the gin.

Martin Miller’s Gin is distilled by the Langley Distillery near Birmingham, in a pot still called Angela. The distillation method, while very traditional, has an interesting twist, which necessitates looking at the botanical list a little earlier than the narrative flow would like; so without further ado, these are…

• Juniper
• Coriander
• Orange peel
• Lemon peel
• Angelica root
• Orris root
• Liquorice root
• Cassia
• Cinnamon
• Nutmeg

There is another secret ingredient, which seems to be widely regarded as cucumber distillate, although there are many others citing all sorts of other botanicals.

While Angela is a traditional pot still (some of the scorn mentioned above is reserved for carterhead stills and berry baskets), not all of the botanicals are distilled together. The citrus botanicals are distilled separately from the other ‘earthier’ botanicals to help preserve their freshness of flavour, and these two distillates are then blended to create the final flavour palette. This harkens to what Ian Hart, of Sacred Gin fame, was saying about different botanicals interfering with each other when distilled together, either blocking or absorbing each other’s flavours.

Once combined, the gin is sent off to Iceland to be blended with water to reach bottling strength (which is 40% ABV). Yes, you read that right; the gin gets flown to Iceland for water-blending. Miller’s has a lot to say about Icelandic water – ordinary water is just not good enough. Icelandic water fell as snow during a time before we started polluting the planet and formed glaciers. The glacial melt-water filters through layers of volcanic rock before being blended with the still-strength gin. The literature claims this soft, pure, super-oxygenated water allows the botanicals to shine-through, unimpeded.

A 3000 mile round trip to be blended before bottling – now that’s a unique selling point. Part of me wonders about the carbon footprint – does the carbon-neutral Icelandic water and electricity offset the footprint of the flight?

Anyway, speaking of bottling, the bottle is a tall, elegant square affair, that is reminiscent  of the (now previous) Plymouth design and Finsbury Platinum. It has a long, thin neck and is crowned with a solid plastic screw cap.

The aroma from the bottle-top, and subsequently from the glass of neat gin, is gentle and fresh; a scent that carries soft juniper, citrus and a sweet spiciness. The smell of alcohol is a very faint undercurrent. The spirit forms very active legs on the side of the glass that seem restless.

The neat gin follows through where the aroma left-off. The first thing that struck me was the sweet, creamy, silky mouth-feel. This then resolves into a wash of citrus flavours, finally trailing-off in a long, warm, spicy finish. The mouth keeps on tingling with citrus, long after the spice has faded. The juniper is soft and understated, being in balance with the other flavours, rather than dominating.

Martin Miller’s is a very good sipping gin; in fact, the more I drink neat, the more I like it – it is still growing on me. I absolutely have to try this in a Martini.

Mixing up a G&T, the fizz drives off clean, fresh citrus and spice aromas with just a hint of juniper – all-in-all, quite similar to the neat aroma.

The tasting, however, is a bit of a revelation; juniper quietly underpins the whole experience  and the tonic brings out more of the floral aspects of the gin, contains some of its spiciness and reins-in some of that sweetness. I often struggle to identify citrus in gin, often noticing it as a sensation rather than a flavour, but Martin Miller’s seems to have citrus in spades, and it is fresh – very fresh, reminding me of grapefruit more than lemon or orange. The finish somehow contrives to be both sweet and dry at the same time and while I am sure there is a hint of green freshness that my mind insists is cucumber, I think that’s my errant brain finding things that it’s looking for. The result is a very complex and fresh G&T which can be best described as rewarding.

With this much citrus in evidence, I would have though that adding a wedge of lime to the G&T would have been a bit over the top, but it isn’t. It certainly doesn’t need it, but it does add something – it makes the G&T even fresher, more luscious and juicy, almost breezy in the mouth. It is so eminently drinkable, I have been practically inhaling these.

Retail price is around the £23 mark, so this isn’t a gin that breaks the bank, and for a middle-market price-tag, it is certainly anything but a middle-market gin.

Addendum

I haven’t gone into a great deal of information on Martin Miller himself. He seems to have turned his hand to many things in life and I could probably write an entire post on him alone. Needless to say, The Man (as the website puts it) and the gin seems to be building together to form a brand; each strong brand has its own identity, but this is the first time I have seen a gin brand built around a man – it is almost like a personality cult. Now, “cult” is a loaded word, and I don’t use it in the negative sense but Martin Miller is to Martin Miller’s Gin, as “curiosity” is to Hendrick’s, or Africa is to Whitley Neill and there seems to be a “know him, know his gin” thing going on.

Another gin from Scotland, Darnley’s View Gin is from the stable of the Wemyss Family, usually better known for their malt whiskies.

The story goes that this gin is inspired by the moment that Mary Queen of Scots spied her future husband, Lord Darnley, through a window of the Wemyss ancestral home, Wemyss Castle. The literature that came with the bottle romanticises this event and triumphs their union as producing the future King of both England and Scotland, James (I of England and VI of Scotland). Like their gin which unites the best of Scottish and English gins, James unified the thrones of these two countries.

However, what the literature doesn’t say is that Darnley became arrogant and paranoid; he developed a jealousy of Mary’s private secretary, David Rizzio, which culminated in him murdering the poor chap in front of a pregnant, and somewhat aghast Mary. The meeting, marriage and murder spanned a mere 13 months. It is thought that Mary then had the Earl of Bothwell kill Darnley, two years to the month since she fist laid eyes on him. Mary Married Lord Bothwell later that year and suffered a string of tragedies and humiliations, culminating in her botched execution in 1587.

Anyway, enough of the history lesson, I dropped a bit of an unexplained clanger a few paragraphs back; a gin that unites the best of Scottish and English gins? Well, Darnley’s View is a London dry gin, produced by a Scottish firm, the distillation of which is contracted out to Thames distillery, in London. A cynic might say that this is a purely a London gin with a Scottish label, but the there is a distinctive “Scottishness” about this gin; but more on that later.

Darnley's View Gin

The bottle is beautifully presented; an elegant white label with sparse black print and a red accent-logo adorns heavy-bottomed, round-shouldered glassware. The Bottle tapers in from the shoulder, much like a cocktail shaker. The stopper is cork with a wooden top (beech?) and it is sealed with heavy foil. Predictably, the opening experience was pleasing.

The botanical list of Darnley’s View is fairly short; in fact, refreshingly short at only six botanicals.

• Juniper
• Coriander Seed
• Lemon Peel
• Angelica Root
• Orris Root
• Elderflower

Elderflower seems to be a fairly popular botanical, making an appearance in a few gins from Scotland as well as in several from farther afield; it  offers sweetness, fruitiness and floral notes all in one neat hit and is native to the UK.

The aroma of Darnley’s View is gentle and sweet. There is juniper there, but it is mild and the smell of alcohol is present. Its scent is somewhat understated.

Sampled neat, Darnley’s View is sweet, spicy and floral with a quite long, dry finish. It’s smooth and that alcoholic twang is well contained – a testament to its pentuple-distillation, no doubt.

In a G&T, Darnley’s View is a blinding mix (in a good way, not a Ginebra San Miguel way). The juniper is gently assertive – smooth and gentle, but certainly not taking a back-seat. The attack is sweet, fruity and floral with just a hint of that delightful lychee flavour that is carried by Elderflower. This quickly mellows to a warm, dry and spicy finish. The bite is there, but like the juniper, it is gentle but firm.

The ratio recommended for this gin is 2:1, but to my mind, this is too cloying; the sweetness of the neat gin is overbearing and the Fever-Tree tonic is swamped. In a 3:1 ratio, the sweetness of the gin and bitterness of the tonic water balance nicely. I would encourage anyone to have a play and find their own sweet-spot.

Another note about getting the most out of a Darnley’s View G&T is, that like Sipsmith, it is completed by lime. Whether this is to balance that sweetness or whether the gin demonstrates a dearth of citrus is probably up for debate. Either way, lime makes the G&T.

Its price-point is about right (around £23) and it has a softness that is common to many Scottish gins – whereas the more traditional London Dry gins are forthright, bold and dry, Scottish gins seem to have a sightly softer countenance about them. It’s an easy drinking gin (both in flavour and strength – 40%) without meandering too close to that wishy-washy vodka-gin categorisation.

All-in-all Darnley’s View is a very pleasing gin and one I will hunt-down again.

The origins of Monkey 47 could have come from some sort of work of fiction. The original recipe is credited to one Wing Commander Mongomery Collins; born in 1909 in Madras in British India to a British Diplomat, he was posted to Germany in 1945, after World War 2. It is said that Montgomery was deeply affected by the destruction of Berlin and resolved to support the reconstruction of Germany and took a personal hand in rebuilding the Berlin Zoo. During this work he came to sponsor an Egret Monkey by the name of Max.

On leaving the Air Force, he opened a guest-house in the Black Forest, which he called “Zum wilden Affen” (the Wild Monkey) – notice the theme building?

Juniper was abundant in the Black Forest and being an English Gentleman, Montgomery enjoyed his gin. Decades later, during renovation of the guest house, a wooden box was discovered, which contained a hand-labelled bottle and some papers. The bottle’s label had a hand-drawn monkey and bore the moniker “Max the Monkey – Schwarzwald Dry Gin”. The papers included all manner of notes and photographs, but critically a list of ingredients used to create the gin, many of which came from the Black Forest region as well as some familiar spices from India.

The botanical list is formidable, running to a massive 47 ingredients (hence the 47 in the name). I have only managed to piece-together 41 from the bottle, the website and the internet at large.

Monkey 47 Gin

• Acacia
• Acorus Calamus
• Almond
• Angelica
• Bitter Orange
• Blackberry
• Cardamom
• Cassia
• Chamomile
• Cinnamon
• Citron Verbena
• Cloves
• Coriander
• Cranberries
• Cubeb
• Dog Rose
• Elderflower
• Ginger
• Grains Of Paradise
• Hawthorne Berries
• Hibiscus Abelmoshus
• Hibiscus Syriacus
• Honeysuckle
• Jasmine
• Juniper
• Kaffir Lime
• Lavender
• 

  Monkey 47 Logo - The botanical list is so long, I have room for another image.

  Lemon
• Lemon Balm
• Lemongrass
• Licorice
• Lingonberries
• Mondara Didyma
• Nutmeg
• Orris
• Pimento
• Pomelo
• Rose Hip
• Sage
• Sloe
• Spruce

Monkey 47 is a fairly potent gin at 47% and comes in 500ml bottles.

Where the Hendrick’s bottle is what a designer imagines an apothecary’s bottle to be like, the Monkey 47 bottle actually is what they were like; smooth, round-shouldered, thin neck and a broad lip; it is like something from a moth-balled chemistry lab.

The bottle is stoppered with a simple straight-sided cork, again like something from a chemistry lab (before rubber bungs became common). Girding the cork is an engraved metal ring bearing the Latin words “EX PLURIBUS UNUM”, which means “Out of many, one” and was once one of the three mottos on the US seal (changed in 1956 to “In God we trust”). Presumably, in this context, it refers to the one product coming from the very many botanicals.

The neat gin is rich and aromatic, with a complex nose. Tasting rewards the mouth with an incredibly intense journey that encompasses herbal, floral, citrus, fruity and spice notes aplenty. There is a familiar resinous flavour that is reminiscent of both Adnams Copperhouse and (less so) Tanqueray 10; indeed, both Hibiscus and Chamomile make an appearance in Monkey 47. The juniper is definitely there, but the supporting cast is like an orchestra. Clear among these is pine, or rather I suspect spruce, which supports the juniper with clear crispness.

The floral and herbal notes are clear and powerful; there is a slight geranium taste and I think there is a honeysuckle/jasmine flavour identifiable. A hint of pomelo is present (redolent of Bloom and Whitley Neill). This is the fruitiest gin I have ever tasted and it is smooth to boot.

Initially, I had thought that this was purely a sipping gin which would be a crime to mix, but trying it with tonic water was a revelation. The finer points of the aromatic flavours really come alive; the citrus comes out and the floral & herbaceous notes veritably explode. The finish is long, dry and spicy and herbal.

Every stage, the attack, middle and finish of Monkey 47 is complex and different from the last. Each mouthful is an engaging roller-coaster of discovery and joy, and it never gets old. It is an intriguing gin and difficult to leave alone. I desperately need to get my hands on more, but at a production of only 2,500 bottles per year, it is hard to find and the price reflects this; at about £38 for 500ml, Monkey 47 gin is probably the most expensive in-production gin I have tried. Is it worth the price? Yes, but as a treat.

Edit – Incidentally, the ring on the cork appears to be the same size as my wedding ring. Size U.