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The science of alcohol
The science of alcohol

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6.2 Producing the final gin – the final taste

The hearts, which are at 83% ABV, are then rested for five days to allow the various flavours to come together and settle. The very last stage in the gin production process is to reduce the alcohol content. To do this, filtered water is added to reduce the strength to the Cotswold Distillery-desired ABV of 46%. The gin is then bottled in-house at the distillery.

Commercially, this is known as ‘single-shot distillation’ and results in the best possible flavour and quality of the final product. Some larger-scale distilleries produce gin for the mass market by adding more neutral grain spirit to the distilled batch to increase the number of bottles made from each run.

Some gin distilleries chill-filter their gin in order to remove oils and esters to make sure the gin stays crystal clear. The Cotswold Distillery leaves their gin unfiltered as they believe that this imparts a specific flavour into their gin. In this next video from the distillery, Sarah MacLellan describes how the Cotswold Distillery aims to produce a gin that can be taken neat, without the need for any additional mixers.

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SARAH MACLELLAN
Historically, Old Tom was produced. And the spirit that was produced was made from really poor raw ingredients and it was made very quickly, very cheaply. So it was flavoured with sugar, and liquorice, and cinnamon as well, just all to hide those really kind of astringent flavours, those horrible flavours that came across just from the nasty raw material that was used to make it. Nowadays, because of the purity of their starting material, the raw materials that we have and we have access to, we can make higher-quality spirits. So between the botanicals, and being able to source botanicals from all over the world, and also being able to source pure spirit, you can make a higher-quality gin. And as someone who makes gin, I think that it's good to aim to make a gin that you can drink neat, just purely because it's a lovely drink, you know? You can flavour it however you want. There's so much scope now to flavour and to experiment with different flavours. We have a lot of opportunity to do that. So it's nice to make a drink that you can drink neat and you don't have to drink it with tonic to cover up any flavours. It should be drunk as it is, really, in my opinion.
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  • According to the Cotswold Distillery, why can their gin be drunk neat without the need for any mixer?

  • The high purity of the raw starting materials used in the Cotswold gin means that higher quality spirits can be made which do not require a mixer.