Gin usually starts with grain alcohol; the juniper berries and other botanicals get added to it and then you distill again, so the volatile parts of the flavors get carried into the final product, while compounded gin does get some flavors that don't end up in the distilled part, so more bathtubby.
Oh I didn't know that; so it's something that's actively done to that poor innocent alcohol.
Well, there’s how it was made originally vs how it’s made now. I think the starting point was using wine that was crap enough that you couldn’t use it for brandy with juniper berries and then distilling that?
Oh! And then they started using barley that was so crap that it was unfit for beer to make gin, so the juniper was there to hid any of the other tastes (And beer was highly regulated but making gin wasn’t sooo)
The WTYP episode about beer covered gin briefly but mostly the “beer was tightly regulated and taxed but gin was at worst taxed about the same per pint as beer was” Which like… lol, people were drinking pints of gin oh dear.
Wikipedia also says that gin existing is all the fault of the Dutch.
England went through a period of time where they were drinking gin by the pint and it’s all the Dutch’s fault, which really explains a lot about why England is Like That, if you think about it.
Yeah isn't that why Winston drank "Victory Gin" in 1984?
Yeah. What’s hilarious is he was such an alcoholic yet STILL couldn’t keep up with FDR and Stalin.
I meant the fictional character from the novel "1984"
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that would make sense. It’s just an easy way to cover up the fact that you’re using shite ingredients. Kinda like overhopping beer.
I thought it started off tasting like that, like there was no saving it
That's sloe gin, iirc.
Wikipedia just says it's "made with gin and blackthorn fruits (sloes)"
Sloe gin's a bit more complicated - it's technically a liqueur, with the sloe berries and sometimes other spices or sugar added to the gin after distillation.
oh! So it is added later. I've seen people distill alcohol from the sloes, too.
That seems like it's a different booze, like mead vs Drambuie even though both use honey
That's a good point.
Oh, the vodka I'm using doesn't rise to the level of "poor innocent"; it's right off the bottom shelf of the grocery store, because being high-purity nothing-but-ethanol-flavor vs slightly-more-than-nothing-but gets drowned in juniper :-)
It’s be interesting to see if Hood Rivers Distilleries vodka still has that noticeable “this is a poison” taste after your process was done to it.
I mean, it probably would. It only takes three passes through a britta to make it acceptable ish (you gotta start with a new filter and chuck it afterwards)
Many people are saying
Lemme guess: is it made in San Jose?
They call it Military Special because you can use it to clean your rifle
I have personally consumed this... substance... and can definitely say I would never subject any of my personal firearms to it.
It's certainly not made in Alameda, and no potatoes were harmed in its fermentation or distillation, but I've got no idea where it's from beyond "probably the US."
I just remember from college daze in Davis that all the cheap vodka was from San Jose. The most ridiculous product was Albertson's reduced-alcohol vodka. No one is buying Albertson's vodka to drink it straight. Just get real vodka and use more mixer!
OK I'm straight-up just curious now; how reduced was it?
I want to say something like 70-80% of the standard ABV. I see someone sells a reduced vodka now that's 80% of the standard. I can see the point of a lower alcohol beer or wine but hard liquor?
lolol like when Jack Daniel's went from 100 proof to 80 proof
I do primarily use vodka for cleaning things or infusing spices in. (And University of Delaware Punch was the opposite direction - Everclear and Grape Nehi, though I did not attend that institution.)
One of these days I'll make some infused vodka with my favorite herb
okay now i gotta wonder, does laudanum technically count as infused vodka?
Wikipedia calls it a tincture. apparently tinctures are different from infusions
i just looked it up, the only (arbitrary) difference is the heating of the fucking solvent? I really *do* need to buy a soxhlet (not for opiates, for shit like black cardamom, cubeb, etc)
Works better with Everclear, even if you can only get the 151-proof stuff, and decarboxylate it first. I've seen a few 120-proof liquors in California, of things that were formerly 151, but that bad idea seems to have gone away.
