Gin comes to us from the Netherlands and took its current form in the sixteenth century.  The predecessor to gin is Dutch ‘genever.’  There are two basic categories of genever, traditional ‘Oude Genever,’ (old style genever) with a high malt content for its base (15%-50%) and ‘Jonge Genever’, the newer style with only 15% malt in its base wine content giving it a lighter flavor profile. Originally, genever was made from distilled wine (like brandy) instead of malted grain.  The onset of the “Little Ice Age” in the mid-sixteenth century caused harvest harvests in Northern Europe to diminish forcing the Dutch to reduce the amount of wine in genever until eventually it was completely a grain-based spirit.

When William of Orange became the King of England in 1689, he brought genever with him.  What the King drinks, the rest of society in England soon emulates.  This coupled with William’s legislation banning the importation of French Brandy when England went to war with France in May of 1689, led to gin becoming England’s number one spirit.  William also enacted the ‘Act For The Encouraging The Distilling Of Brandy And Spirits From Corn,’ in 1689, making it very cost effective for the common people of England to distill their own gin.  Unlike Dutch genever, which is made from malt, English gin is distilled with corn but both are infused with the juniper berries giving them that distinctive flavor.

Like all alcoholic products, gin starts with a grain mash.  Gins can be made using a variety of grain such as corn, barley or wheat.  Distillers have also been known to use honey, molasses, apples, potatoes, grapes, carrots and many other ingredients in their gin mash bills.  This generic mash can be used to distill a number of spirits – whiskey, vodka, rum, etc. – to make it gin, you must add aromatic botanicals.

Botanicals are the ingredients that set gin apart from other spirits like vodka.  The distilled spirit absorbs these gin botanicals while passing through the still’s column or is a distillation “thumper” chamber.  Every gin has a different blend of botanical ingredients.  Some of the most popular gin botanicals that distillers prefer to use in their spirits include: citrus, coriander, cardamom, anise, angelica root, cinnamon, and of course, juniper berries.  Distillation is generally a two or three stage process.  In each stage the gin becomes progressively “dryer” meaning the alcohol content is increased. 

One of the downsides to gin, especially in the 18^th Century, was that it was fairly easy to make.  This led to a huge variety in the quality of gin you could be served at your local pub.  Ideally, the distillation process removes undesirable contents from the gin mash water like acetaldehyde, acetone, and methanol.  Unfortunately, because many people skipped on the quality of their distillation in the interest of getting higher volume yields, their products tended to be subpar with lots of contaminants, some of which can be poisonous.

Another downside to cheap gin is that the very thing that makes gin prized, its botanicals, can mask poor distillation methods.  In the process of distilling gin, botanicals are placed in the still’s distillation column (often in a “thumper” chamber in the middle of the condensation pathway.  As the alcohol passes over these botanicals, it picks up esters and essential oils that give gin its unique flavor profile.  Unfortunately, acetaldehyde, acetone, and methanol also pick up these flavorings so if these are not carefully separated from the alcohol “cut” which evaporates at a higher temperature these contaminants get infused in the gin as well. 

The first 5% of a gin distillation run will consist of the foreshots which contain methanol.  Methanol is extremely volatile but also extremely toxic causing blindness.  The foreshots must be discarded.  The next 30% percent of the distillation is the heads. Similar to the foreshots, the heads of your run are filled with volatile alcohols. One particularly problematic head is acetone which has a distinct, solvent-like smell, which is easy to detect in a pure distillate but can be masked by botanicals.  Drinking the heads won’t make you blind but they will leave you with the worst hangover of your life.  Good distillers throw these out (we’ve lost 35% of our “alcohol” thus far) but less scrupulous distillers will leave them in to increase their yield.  The part of the distillation you want to collect is the “hearts” this is where you get ethyl alcohol. Identifying and collecting these is what makes a quality gin.  A skillful distiller can discard the foreshots and heads and collect as much as 30% of the total alcohol yield of the mash but it requires skill.  The last 35% of the mash is the tails.  These are the mash products that evaporate at a higher boiling point than alcohol.  Tails include water as well as protein and carbohydrates from the mash.  Taking them out is the whole purpose of distillation. 

So you can see that making good gin requires throwing out a bunch of the product in the name of carefully selecting the best heart.  Couple this with the fact that stills are inefficient and good gin must be distilled multiple times in order to isolate the best “dry” gin and you can see that the economics of gin production are rife with opportunities for shoddy shortcuts. 

ONLY DRINK THE BEST QUALITY GIN!  Bad gin can kill you or at least make you miserable.

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