Blue Rabbit
Gins
Blue Rabbit Signature Gin
Blue Rabbit Premium Blue Gin
Preparation
To prepare our signature gin, a batch of Japanese shochu spirit is introduced to our still. This shochu has been diluted to an alcohol content that will efficiently extract flavour oils from the botanical load that will be macerated in the spirit.
Our Premium Gin is prepared in a similar way to our signature gin. The botanicals are steeped in the base alcohol for a period of 24hrs. As this is also a gin, the botanical mix contains a dominating percentage of juniper berries. The primary botanicals that give our Premium Gin its distinctive character include a higher percentage of yuzu and hinoki, with the addition of lavender flowers.
Distillation
The distillation process begins when the still boiler is powered up and the now partial flavour extracted alcohol is heated up. This heating of the base alcohol in the still allows the alcoholic vapours to leave the spirit base and travel through the botanicals and up through the column where they go through a gas to liquid exchange several times; rising as a gas, cooling back into a liquid, rising again to a gas state and cooling again to a liquid. This part of the process is called reflux and it’s this reflux process that ensures the purity of our spirit as it carries the flavour molecules up to the top of the column and out of the still.
Once these alcohol vapours reach the top of the column, they are immediately subjected to a cooling process as cold water flows through the condenser, allowing the new make alcoholic spirit to flow once again in its liquid state. The now concentrated and highly flavoursome alcohol is then collected in a stainless steel vessel where it is diluted with charcoal filtered water down to its target bottling strength of 43% abv.
Bottling
Now that the spirit has reached its target strength of 43%, it’s ready for the final stage, bottling. To ensure that no foreign objects or tiny unwanted particles find their way into the bottle, the spirit is pumped in through our vacuum bottling system. This ensures each spirit is passed through stainless steel micron filters before being pumped, under vacuum into the bottle. A natural beech wood top stopper is secured into the neck of the bottle and a capsule is heat-shrunk to secure the stopper. The Blue Rabbit Gin front, back and neck labels are then applied and the bottle is numbered and personally signed by our Distiller before being released for sale.
