Making Hussingtree Gin.
The process of distillation in itself is relatively simple. Creating great tasting, distilled gin and being able to replicate it time and again. Now that’s a little more tricky. Here’s a guide to our approach.
Inspiration
One of our core values is to take inspiration from our home county of Worcestershire. With an array of great produce grown across the county, there’s no shortage of botanicals that could form the basis of a Worcestershire gin.
Take the juneberry, grown commercially for the first time in the UK within Worcestershire. We heard about it on the local radio show and read more about it, then stored it in the back of our minds as a possible botanical. Fast forward a few months and we set about seeing how we could make a flavoursome Juneberry Gin.
Development
Starting with a specific botanical and creating a great tasting gin takes perseverance.
Understanding the botanical’s flavour profile and how it works with other botanicals is the start. Developing a well balanced combination only happens through trial and error. And lots of it.
We use our table top 2 litre test still, called Evie, for all our initial development. Evie enables us to tweak and tinker with different combinations and quantities of botanicals. The inevitable output being an ongoing set of distilled gin samples that our team test, discuss and learn from for further refinement.
Taste testing
Everyone’s gin palates are different. That's why we never assume that what we think tastes good does to the wider public. That’s why we always, always, always ask other people what they think!
During the development of our gins we hold a number of blind tasting sessions. These are focused at receiving objective feedback, helping us to identify any particular favourites and potential areas for improvement. Read more about the tasting sessions by clicking here.
Following further minor refinement we continue with obtaining some final feedback - from the public and local experts. All of which helps us finalise the botanical mix to ensure our proposed gin does indeed hit the mark!
Refinement and production
Translating what works on our test still into a production run takes a little more refinement. By completing short test production runs we can identify subtle changes to flavour and any potential required tweaks to botanical ratios.
Once we’re fully satisfied with the quality of output, we press ahead with full production. We complete this in our larger traditional alembic copper still, called Charlotte.
Our first four dry gins are distilled using the one shot method. This means nothing is added, except filtered water, to the gin once it's distilled.
We hope you enjoy your next bottle…
