Recipe Development

It start's with the recipe for our gins. Lucie has a highly developed sense of taste and smell and can develop complete recipes with hardly any experimentation. Indeed our 2021 Australian Gin Awards Gold Medal winning Ascension was developed in one go. The first distillation of the botanicals was the one we entered in the competition - and it was a brand new concept using ingredients we had never used before like Grapefruit Peel, Lemon Thyme and Hops. Lucie is WSET Level 2 & 3 (with Merit) Spirits qualified so she can recognize a good gin!

Barley Fermentation

We make our own Grain Neutral Spirit (GNS) as the base spirit for our Gins and Vodkas. Not many distilleries do this – it’s very time consuming and adds weeks to the process of making spirits. Nevertheless, the result is a product that we have complete control over and is of the highest quality. We believe a big reason all our spirits can be consumed straight (if you want) is because of the mouth feel that our barley-based spirits have.

 

 

So, we start with 25 kilograms of Gladfield barley. We crush it and add it to 70 litres of filtered water which has been heated to 71 degrees Celsius. Next, we stir the malt through it and make sure the liquid maintains a temperature of 64 degrees for an hour.

 

 

Once the desired alcohol potential is reached, we drain the liquid from the boiler and decant it into one of our 75 Litre Stainless Steel Fermentors.

The liquid is left to cool overnight, until it reaches a temperature that will allow the yeast to be pitched. Once pitched, we babysit the fermenters for two weeks ensuring the temperature of the liquid stays as close as possible to 24 degrees.

The spent barley, which is left over from this process, is transported to a mate’s small farm and then fed to the livestock – Zero Waste.

 

Pot Stripping

Once the two weeks are up, we confirm via specific gravity reading that the now beer is ready to be distilled.

It's time for the first pot strip!

We use a 60 litre still for this and each run takes approx 4.5 hours.

This process converts the beer at approx 9% to 53% alcohol, but it is still very rough, which is why we pot strip the 53% alcohol a second time in a smaller 30 litre still to further refine it. After the second pot strip we are left with only 4 litres of alcohol at approx. 77% ABV.

 

The above processes as well as the ingredients are exactly the same as making the finest single malt whiskeys. But instead of transferring this spirit into barrels and putting our feet up, our work continues, and we further refine into Gin and Vodka.

Column Stripping

The now 77% alcohol is further refined through our 6 litre finishing column still for up to 12 hours and emerges as a very potent 95.75% to 96.20% ABV and has a neutral taste and smooth mouthfeel. 

We constantly monitor the alcohol purity and strength throughout this process and are left with 2.5 litres of high strength alcohol.

 

 

Liquid Infusion Extraction

The way we extract the flavour and aroma from our botanicals, is one of our unique differences.

We fill the finishing still with a combination of the column distilled spirit (ie GNS) and Pure Dew water and then use an extraction process that allows the alcohol vapours to rise through a pipe then solidify and seep through the botanicals contained in a cylinder and then return to the still.

We repeat this process until all flavour and aroma is extracted - this can be up to 20 cycles and four hours.

 

Our old process was vapour infusion, which is similar but only allowed one extraction. You can only imagine the difference in flavours we get now...

Gin

If the now column stripped grain neutral spirit (GNS) is destined to become Gin, we distill the extracted botanicals that resulted from the extraction process in pot mode, so that maximum taste is consolidated into the newly created Gin.

Once this process is completed, after about three hours, the now 85% ABV Gin is cut to 46% ABV using Antipodes water. We love Antipodes water because the neutral pH and low minerality means the Gin doesn’t pick up any flavours from the water i.e it lets the Gin shine.

Vodka

If the GNS is destined to become Vodka, then it is put through the column still a second time.

If we're creating a varietal style Vodka, it goes through the liquid extraction process and then into pot mode. This creates the ultimate smoothness and taste.

It is a ten-hour process to convert 3 litres of GNS into pure Vodka, as it drips out at two drops per second.

 

Bottling

The bottling gets done by hand and we apply the beeswax top to keep the spirits safe until you open the bottle.

Each batch of Vodka or Gin consists of six – nine bottles. 

That's all it takes to make an all-natural handcrafted artisan gin or vodka.

We reckon making our own base spirit is 80% of the entire process and although it would be a hell of a lot simpler and cheaper to just buy it in, it wouldn't be the same...

 

Premises

So, why do we think we are the smallest commercial distillery in the world? Well, we think a batch size of six to nine bottles would qualify us. Failing that, our distillery is in a corner of our garage - about eight square meters!