A How To Guide …
The OG: Cornershop Gin
It’s no secret that there’s been an affinity between Day True and Gin since our first showroom opened in a corner shop in Maida Vale. We enjoy playing host, and a G&T featuring a London Dry has been something we regularly offer clients to help everyone feel at home as we learn more about the hopes and dreams for the homes that we design for.
And we like to make things personal so, once upon a time … we also created our own brand of small batch, handmade gin, named it for our corner shop location, and gave it a citrussy, herby, spicy flavour profile, with a hint of brine to sharpen its edge and to match with our own design-forward ethos.
While still in possession of a few precious remaining bottles – stored in our ‘vault’ – and still inclined to offer a G&T if the time is right – which it nearly always is (obvs), we sadly lost our gin distilling partner somewhere between the disruption of the 2020 Pandemic and our transition from Maida Vale Cornershop to Wimbledon Village High Street.
We’ve taken the hiatus as opportunity to sample the charms of others – testing a variety of flavours, experimenting with tonics, garnishes and cocktail recipes, using balloon and high or low-ball glasses (we’ve no idea who Tom Collins is, but we understand the definition of his glassware) – but always with the drumbeat of an idea of getting our own brand back together (watch this space for our next official blend).
Mixing Memory with Desire
In the meantime, inspired by our past history, keen to try an experiment in instant gratification, and with the scent of resin, citrus, and spices rising in our nostrils as we prepared for a recent wreath-making evening in our showroom garden, we’ve created our own domestic ‘bathtub’ gin: using a vacuum drawer, a steam-enabled oven and two hours of our time. (NB: you can create something similar without these appliances, it will just take a lot longer – as in days or weeks – to get a similar result).
Original Gin
Before we share our quick and easy recipe for adding flavour to gin – and, as bonus, for squeezing gin out of vodka (not quite a divine miracle, but it feels pretty close) – it might be useful to start with a few gin basics.
In the Spirit
Gin starts life as a neutral base spirit – typically known as vodka and defined by the fact that it’s essentially ‘flavourless’. Gin, by contrast, is necessarily flavoured with juniper berries – from which it also derives its name.
Why Juniper?
Juniper is the primary flavour note for multiple historical reasons, including its (one time) easy and widespread availability, its assumed medicinal, mythical and magical properties and, maybe most important of all, its ability to mask the taste of what could (historically speaking) otherwise be a rough and ready base spirit (depending on how it was made, who and what it was made for, and what it was made from).
Compounds and Distillations
The methodology by which Juniper is added to the original spirit varies and will result in gin that is either known a ‘compound’ gin or an entirely ‘distilled‘ one. In its simplest (compound) form (as in the ‘bathtub’ variety that we will demonstrate in the method below), juniper is infused into the neutral spirit without any further distillation. For a more sophisticated ‘distilled’ variety, the juniper is infused using further processes of distillation.
Distilling juniper may involve processes of: maceration and heating, cold infusion, or steaming – different methodologies and complexities applying according to the equipment choices, skill sets, and intentions of the craft makers. Unlike with wine tasting, where descriptors for the final product are often metaphorical in nature, any flavour notes present in a gin are those that have been present in the manufacturing process.
A Gin by any other name …
Gins can be ‘Classic’ (juniper forward), ‘Contemporary’ (modern, crafted, flavour profiles with an endless source of inspirations), associated with a place and/or profession (Plymouth, the Navy), ‘Liquorous’ (ie sweetened – as in Sloe gin), ‘Barrel Aged’ (no standards apply other than the obvious), or, as in our case today, ‘Bathtub’ (ie made at home – a technical gin, that has no shame in looking dark or cloudy).
Bath Time
‘Bathtub’ was originally the name attached to an illicit gin-styled ‘hooch’ created as a result of early 20th Century US Prohibition laws – proving that when you limit access to drinkable alcohol by legal means, people will find a way to procure their spirits using whatever means are available. It was named for the method of its production, whereby low quality alcohol was processed in a bathtub – because this proved to be the easiest place to dilute crude strong spirits directly into bottles.
The rough flavour of a bathtub spirit often required further additions to make it palatable – at which point we also find the debut of the cocktail: because it’s from these less than optimal origins that the culture of the cocktail – as a drink, an event, or an hour of the day – has become so firmly embedded as a part of modern day social lore and practice.
Today we use the term ‘bathtub’ to invoke the idea behind the spirit rather than to recreate the original methodology. If you’re looking for something clear and sophisticated, you will need to pay the premium for what only a distiller can do well, if you’re looking for a creative pursuit, flavour profiles you can call your own, and a home-made gift that (IMHO) beats anyone’s suggestion of a jar of chutney, you may like to take a dip into our Day True ‘bathtub’.
The Bathtub Method(s)
There are two ways of flavouring your bathtub liquor:
- Method 1: involves the pimping of a Classic London Dry – for our first attempts, we chose Gordon’s (juniper forward, resinous, with a hint of lemon zest) to which we added (in individual batches) bay leaves, vanilla and cardamom pods, and Seville (bitter) Orange zest.
- Method 2: transforms vodka into gin – by adding juniper berries as an essential, and whatever other mix of aromatics you may choose to blend them with. This creates a swarthier hued gin than Method 1.
Ingredients (both methods)
- Method 1: Gin + aromatics
- Method 2: Vodka + juniper berries (ration of 10g berries: 500ml spirit) + aromatics
For either method: you don’t need the most expensive spirit, but start with something of a reasonable quality and a drinkable nature.
Aromatics/Botanicals – suggestions
Choose any of the following: mix and match according to personal taste/sense of adventure:
- Leaves: Bay, Makrut Lime
- Herbs: Rosemary, Thyme
- Flowers (dried): Hibiscus, Rose
- Citrus zest: Lemon, Lime, Bitter Orange (white pith removed –can be used fresh or dried)
- Seeds/pods: Cardamom, Coriander, Fennel, Peppercorns (pink, green, white, black, long, cubeb), Caraway, Allspice, Mace, Vanilla
- Roots: Liquorice
This is by no means an exhaustive list, it’s simply some of ingredients that we blended to create our gin(s).
Method
- In a small vacuum bag (our bags were 180mm x 280mm), add between 350ml and 500ml spirit (gin or vodka), a few pieces of your chosen aromatics (you don’t want to overdo the flavours) – eg: approx. 4-5 peppercorns, 2-3 cardamom pods, 3-4 small strips of peel etc
- for method 2 (vodka) – add 7g–10g (bruised/crushed) juniper berries.
- Set the vacuum drawer to its lowest vacuum setting (in a VZug vac drawer (a ‘chamber’ vacuum sealer) we used setting 1 (of 3)), and vacuum seal the contents inside the bag. (Note: always use a low vacuum seal when vacuum sealing liquids)
- Set the sous-vide cooking function of the oven to a minimum of 57ºC (steam) or a maximum of 63ºC (steam) – the temperature you use will depend on your choice of aromatics – anything that is particularly delicate (soft leaves) should be infused at a lower temperature, anything more robust (eg, hard spices) can take the higher temperature. The aim is to keep the ‘sparkle’ of the spirt, not to dull it by overheating the infusion.
- Timing: Leave to steam for 2 hours.
- Remove the bags from the oven (they will be wet, so best to have a container ready to receive them)
- Chill immediately (in an ice bath), then strain (preferably over muslin) into clean, sterilised bottles.
- Your gin is now ready to drink.
To Serve
- We serve our gin over ice, mix it with tonic, and garnish it with elements that either enhance or complement the flavours of the gin.
- We’ve paired kumquats with our bitter orange, lemons and/or limes with hibiscus and rose, rosemary with green herbs, and orange zest with nutmeg and cardamom flavours.
A final word goes to celebrated chef Richard Corrigan whose advice, when asked how best to stockpile for the possibility of shortage in a national emergency, was: “First of all, you’ve got to make sure you have enough gin and enough tonic”.
