Day 2: For the love of Juniper!

I learned something today. I do not like drinking neat vodka. It burns my throat, makes me gag, and sends immediate “fight or flight” messages to my brain.

I like smelling neat vodka even less. In fact, if anyone out there is considering their preferred method of removing the odd unruly stray nose hair, I suggest trying vodka sniffing as an inexpensive form of depilation. As one deep inhale through the nostrils feels like it will literally burn away the lining of your nose itself, any nose hair, and probably a good percentage of your brain cells too.

So why on earth was I drinking and sniffing neat vodka, I hear you say? In the name of gin research, of course.

Our basic gin base made yesterday has been sitting fermenting for over 24 hours, letting the juniper berries work their sweet pungent magic. And before we move on to the next stage, hubbie and I thought we should compare and contrast the 2 differing base mixes both against each other, and against straight vodka. And to avoid any visual bias, do so with our eyes shut.

He went first. Eyes closed: vodka – long, deep sniff. Followed by a good slug, quickly swallowed without so much as a raised eyebrow – like the true roughty-toughty hard-spirit-drinking Scot that he is.

Secondly gin base Sample 1 – Deep sniff, slug, swallow, bringing forth the comment “That is NOT unpleasant.”

Then gin base Sample 2 – Equally deep comparative sniff, slug, swallow, to which he announced “That one is better.”

My turn. Eyes closed, he hands me the glass…. Then let’s not relive the unpleasantness of my vodka sniffing experience, suffice to say my face apparently contorted “like one of those old gurning women with no teeth.”

On to Sample 1: easier on the nose, and far more palatable. Not bad. Definitely almost gin already – perhaps just not very good gin, yet.

Then Sample 2: not that much difference to Sample 1 in the sniff test to my indelicate sense of smell. But the taste? Definitely smoother. Surprisingly noticeably different to Sample 1. At this stage, Sample 2 clearly the winner.

Sample 1 had the juniper berries just added to the vodka, the end result being lighter in both colour and flavour. Whereas in Sample 2, an equal amount of berries were lightly crushed in the mortar and pestle before adding to the vodka. This resulted in a slightly darker coloured gin, and a smoother more rounded flavour.

Now the fun part, time to start adding other botanicals and get some additional flavour into this bad boy.

We have decided to try 2 different flavours (for no other reason than because we can.) So this time, we are attempting chocolate orange, and rhubarb & ginger. We firstly decanted 2 lots of each sample (approx 350ml each) into different bottles. So 4 in total.

Into the first bottle of Sample 1 (the lighter) we added half a teaspoon of cacao nibs and orange peel. Into the second bottle of Sample 1 we added freeze dried rhubarb and ginger. We repeated the same into the 2 bottles of Sample 2, so that we will have a comparative of the 2 different juniper strengths.

I am really enjoying all the measuring, pouring, combining and basically, playing with flavours. We will now leave our concoctions for another 24 hours, and then have another taste test.

I have decided if nothing else and the results taste like the bottom of a swill bucket at the end of a busy Saturday night in a Glasgow pub, then at least I can say, I’m loving the alchemy.