The labels are on the printing press, a stack of empty bottles are ready to be filled and our blend of botanicals have been fine tuned.
Why do we use three different kinds of orange peel? Why do we make cuts and discard certain portions of the gin as it’s being made? Because it all matters.
Technically you can toss one juniper berry in the still and call it gin — although it would taste like vodka, which is what the base of gin starts as. It would be more convenient to just toss a handful of ingredients in the still, turn it on and walk away for 12 hours. But we wouldn’t be proud of our product.
Are you a fan of craft beer? I’ve found that the variety and quality of gin, which can be daunting to someone who is unfamiliar, is not far from the craft beer movement. It’s not made out of the gas tank of your car, nor is it tree sap collected by unicorns. Seriously, it is distilled ambrosia.
Distillation is the process of separating and concentrating alcohol. This is done by heating the alcohol, which boils at a lower temperature than water, and sending the vapor up and over to a condenser, which cools it and turns it back to liquid. The process leaves most of the water and unwanted flavors in the still, and gives you a strong concentrated alcohol that water is added back into to create the final product.
With whiskey, this is a clear, sweet and harsh spirit that then goes into a barrel to smooth out and color over time. With gin, no further aging or tinkering is done at this point. Because there are several different oils from citrus and other botanicals, it does need to rest for several days to blend and settle down.
Gin by definition is a spirit with the main characteristic flavor derived from juniper berries and must be bottled at 40-percent alcohol by volume or greater. There are several ways to go about making a product you can call gin.
One is to ferment a base and then distill it with juniper berries and other botanicals all in one start to finish process. This is far less common since it typically takes several passes or a complex still to make a neutral spirit which is what you want as a base for a clean gin.
The other two methods are to start with a neutral base and either distill all the botanicals in the same batch or distill each individual botanical in separate batches and blend them together. It all boils down to preference, and there are fantastic gins made using all methods.
This all may seem a bit dry — and that’s just how we like it. London dry to be exact. I could go on and on about all of the different types of gin and how they are made, but the beauty of it is that there is no “one” gin that rules them all.
As long as juniper is your primary ingredient, the other botanical options are endless. Couple that with different still sizes and shapes, base alcohols, methods to macerate (pre-soak) the botanicals, and the distiller’s nose and palate to judge when a batch is done and you’d be hard pressed to find two gins that taste the same.
All that said, you’ll be able to taste our gin next weekend. Temple Distilling will hold a soft open Oct. 17 and a grand opening party on Oct. 31. San Juan Cigars will be on hand at the grand opening to hand roll some cigars. Going forward, our tasting hours will be noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays
There, I’m done with my plug, now go drink some gin.
AJ and Jamie Temple will open Temple Distilling in Lynnwood this fall. For more information on Temple Distilling, visit templedistilling.com. Email AJ at aj@templedistilling.com or follow them on Facebook.
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