Home › Brandy, Whiskey and Imitation Spirits › Filter for Gin
Filter for Gin
have, so far as their oils or essences are concerned, very analogous properties; and since their virtue in distillation with the spirit is to communicate their oily or fragrant principle, why not add a few drops of each of the oils at once to the pure spirit, to procure the desired. liquor, and by this means obviate the necessity of distillation? In the preparation of gin, both sweetened and unsweetened, and indeed of liquors generally, the greatest possible care must be taken to avoid an excess of flavoring. The most esteemed samples are those that consist of very pure French or neutral proof spirit, slightly flavored. In this respect the same rules that are given for brandy will also apply to this liquor. And while we are on this subject, we would recommend as a basis for gin and brandy the French spirit manufactured by Attwood's celebrated patent process, as being a pure article, and as free from fusil as alcohol can be. (See "Alcohol.") The whole of the casks and utensils employed for making gin should be perfectly clean and properly prepared, so as not to give color; for, if this spirit acquires the palest colored tint, its value is lessened, and if much colored it is rendered unsaleable. Filter for Gin.
To filter gin, the brandy filter may be used, but a still preferable filter for this liquor can be constructed by using a bed of granulated animal charcoal instead of the bed of carded cotton in the brandy filter, in every other respect the filter for gin may be made like that recommended for brandy. Animal charcoal is substituted for cotton because the former substance renders any liquid limpid by filtration through it, and it is desirable to make gin as colorless as possible. (See Filter for Bitters, page 211.) TO MAKE HOLLAND GIN.) To make Holland Gin.
RECIPE No. 1.
To 100 gals. pure spirit, proof, add : 1 ounce oil of juniper berries, 1 gal. white sugar syrup, 1/4 oz. oil of sweet fennel. 1 lb. orange peel (infused).
Infuse the orange peel in sufficient pure spirit 95°, to cover it for 3 or 4 days, then filter through filtering paper before using. The oils of juniper and fennel should be cut with pure spirit, say 1 quart for each. This and all other manufactured gin is much improved by being filtered. The above or any of the following recipes may be prepared in smaller quantities, by reducing the proportions of the ingredients. To make Holland Gin.
RECIPE No. 2.
To 25 gals. pure proof spirit, add : 1 66 + 66 gin essence, white sugar syrup, Mix thoroughly and filter if necessary.
To make Schiedam Gin.
RECIPE No. 3.
Take 40 gallons French spirit, 10 above proof, 3½ drachms oil of juniper berry, 30 drops oil of sweet fennel, 8 ounces orange peel tincture, 1 quart of syrup.
Cut the oils in 95 per cent. alcohol. Oil of juniper is not easily cut, therefore add the alcohol until the liquid is clarified.
This is a compounder's formula, not a distiller's: neutral spirit is flavored with essential oils rather than redistilled over botanicals. The text is transcribed from a damaged page and one of the three recipes is unusable as printed.
- Recipe No. 2 is incompleteThe quantities for gin essence and sugar syrup have dropped out of the text entirely — what survives is "1 66 + 66". There is no way to recover them; work from No. 1 or No. 3.
- Proof and "10 above proof"American proof spirit of the period is 50% alcohol by volume. "40 gallons French spirit, 10 above proof" means 110 proof, or 55% ABV. "Pure spirit 95°" is roughly 95% alcohol, what would now be sold as neutral grain spirit.
- Drachms and dropsA drachm is one-eighth of an ounce. Read as fluid measure that is about 3.7 mL, so 3½ drachms of juniper oil is a bit under half a fluid ounce; the book may equally intend weight, since Recipe No. 1 doses oil by the ounce. Drops are not a fixed measure but run about 20 to the millilitre for a thin oil, so 30 drops is roughly 1.5 mL.
- The hinge: cut the oils firstEssential oils dissolve poorly in spirit at proof strength and can separate out rather than disperse. Dissolving them in a quart of 95% alcohol before adding is not optional here, and the instruction to keep adding alcohol to juniper oil "until the liquid is clarified" is the test to work to.
- Flavoring is easy to overdoOne ounce of juniper oil to 100 gallons is about 0.3 mL per gallon. At these dilutions a small error in weighing is a large error in the glass, which is exactly the caution the author gives in the preceding paragraphs.
- Animal charcoalBone char, still used in some sugar refining. It is being used here as a decolorizer, not a flavor filter, because a tinted gin was unsaleable. Modern equivalents are activated carbon filter media.
- FusilFusel oil — the higher alcohols that carry over in poorly rectified spirit and give it a solventy, heavy character. "Free from fusil" is the period's way of saying clean neutral spirit.
- SweeteningOne gallon of syrup to 100 gallons of spirit is a very light touch, closer to the faint sweetness of an old genever than to Old Tom gin, which was sweetened far more heavily.
- Scaling and legalityThe proportions divide cleanly; a 100-gallon batch reduced to one gallon needs about 0.3 mL juniper oil and about 1.3 fl oz syrup. Note that flavoring lawfully purchased spirit for personal use is one thing, and rectifying or bottling spirits for sale is licensed activity in most jurisdictions.
This comes from the American compounding trade of the mid-nineteenth century, when a "rectifier" bought bulk neutral spirit and turned it into whatever the market wanted — brandy, whiskey, gin — by flavoring, coloring and filtering rather than distilling. The two names used here point at the same origin: Holland gin is genever, the Dutch malt-based spirit that gin descends from, and Schiedam is the town near Rotterdam that dominated its production and became a byword for the style. Selling flavored neutral spirit under those names was frankly imitative, and the book says so, arguing that since the botanicals only contribute their oils in the still, the oils may as well be added directly. That logic is chemically not unreasonable and gastronomically incomplete, which is why compounded gin never displaced distilled gin. The insistence on colorlessness is a commercial detail worth noticing, and the trade filtered accordingly.