Richard Crooks's Website
Gin Recipes
Gin is a most quintissentially English drink (although it's a derivative of a Dutch drink called jenever), and the English love to make gin, and drink gin, and put gin in everything from tonic water to potato chips. Gin is as English as it gets quite honestly.
I've had a dabble with making gin, that is bathtub gin, which is easier to make with less risk of killing yourself, and you can read about my exciting ginsperiments here. Perhaps it'll give you some ideas that you'd like to try yourself
Base: Vodka
Botanicals: Juniper, Coriander, Angelica, Za'atar, Black Pepper, White Pepper, Red Pepper, Green Pepper, Florina Pepper
Description: A herbaceous gin that uses Za'atar and various forms of pepper. Basically I'm emigrating and need to use up my spice rack, so it gets turned into gin.
It's a lovely pleasant gin as a matter of fact. The za'atar is herby and uplifting and the mix of peppers really brings some fruitiness to the gin.
Base: Vodka
Botanicals: Juniper, Coriander, Angelica, Cardamom, Nutmeg, Mace
Description: A friend of mine who went on holiday to Sri Lanka picked up some interesting spices including cardamom, nutmeg and mace (the strands around the outside of nutmeg kernels). So along with the base gin botanicals, I added some of these Sri Lankan botanicals to make this spicy, south Asian inspired gin!
Base: Vodka
Botanicals: Juniper, Coriander, Angelica, Licorice, Purple Basil, Thyme
Description: I bought some purple parsley in Armenia, which sadly in dried form isn't as delicious as it is in fresh form. I also bought some thyme at the Khachik Gata Festival, which was a most amusing place, as I also drank some stupendously strong vodka, as well as some home made wines.
So I thought I'd turn these herbs into gin. And the gin comes out pretty well!
Base: Vodka
Botanicals: Juniper, Coriander, Angelica, Orris Root, Licorice, Cubeb, Grains of Paradise, Lemon Peel, Orange Peel, Cassia Bark, Citric Acid
Description: I've not made any gin for a while, mainly because I was given a bottle of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Fire for Christmas, which while an okay beverage, kinda okay beverage, isn't something I'll sit down and drink sophisticatedly, instead I've been mostly drinking it with apple soda. So this is the basic botanicals from my botanicals kit that I started off with when I started making gin! I also added a bit of citric acid to make this a bit sharper. I'm just trying to have a tidy out basically because I have some big plans coming up later this year.
Base: Vodka
Botanicals: Juniper, Coriander, Angelica
Description: So, I hadn't made any gin for a while and I noticed that my juniper was starting to look a bit, well, dodgy. So I made a big batch of gin, using just the 3 basic gin botanicals, and lots of them.
So what does it taste like? Well I figure that the vodka has successfully pickled away any dodginess, along with the filtering, to make this gin excellent.
It's actually quite light, and clean, tastes basically like a normal straightforward gin, instead of a silliness. It's pretty good, definitely drinkable!
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