A few years ago I attended a gin making class at Adnams, redistilling their vodka with botanicals. I subsequently made a compound, or bathtub,  gin at home by steeping botanicals in vodka. For this I followed an article on the Guardian and substituted some of the botanicals from Adnams course.

Recently I decided to break this down into the individual elements  – a juniper vodka and single botanical tinctures – so I could make different gin styles by the glass. This will also allow me to better understand different botanicals, which is why I have included it on my ale blog. I will use the tinctures and their impact on gin to appreciate the aromas and flavours that alcohol extracts and ultimately could bring to ale. I could add drops of the tinctures at bottling or add the botanicals to the ale post primary fermentation. I will probably use some of the tinctures to make vermouth at somepoint also.

Based on the weight of botanicals that went into each glass of the compound gin I calculated the weight required for the juniper vodka and the tinctures.  18g of juniper were steeped in 750ml of vodka for a week and 5g of each botanical in 75ml of vodka for a week on average; wet herbs and fruit peels had less, very hard seeds like grains of paradise had longer. I used twice the weight of wet botanicals to account for water.

The flavoured vodka can be filtered through a carbon filter to remove the colour but I have never bothered. I like the colour and imagine I would loose, dilute or contaminate the flavoured vodkas by running them through a filter.

For a fairly earthy, spicy, licorice-y gin I used the following:

• 35ml juniper vodka
• 2ml angelica root tincture
• 1.5ml bitter orange peel tincture
• 1.5ml cardamom tincture
• 1ml cassia bark tincture
• 1ml coriander seed tincture
• 1ml fennel seed tincture
• 1.5ml green anise
• 1ml licorice
• 1ml orris root
• 0.5ml rosemary
• 1ml thyme