What inspired you to create Bathtub Gin?
It’s all about the process of cold compounding. We are a bunch of spirit geeks and the “art of flavour” is a massive thing for us, so crafting a gin with the freshest and truest botanical delivery became a bit of an obsession. The “compounding method” inspired some playing around with botanicals and this, uniquely, gave us exactly what we were looking for and wanted to share with other gin lovers. How did you get from the idea to the finished product? With an awful lot of patience and experimentation. Using recipes that are intended for distilled gin was totally out, as the balance of flavour and botanical ratios driven by distillation as opposed to compounding is totally different. We had an idea of the way we wanted it to taste (rich, rounded, warming) and we had a vision for the packaging – getting to the finished product was just the product of a lot of hard work and patience. What's the distillery like and can you tell us about the distillation process? We use top quality, pot-still botanical spirit distilled to our recipe by our partners at Langley Distillery, then cold compound with our 6 botanical recipe. Every batch takes up to 2 days of monitoring, tasting, waiting and tasting again to make sure the gin is coming out consistently with the clean, fresh botanical flavours we feel shine through best with the cold compounding process. Each bottle is wrapped, strung and waxed by hand before it heads out to customers. What's a normal day like for you at Ableforth's? Now the brand is taking off there’s an increasing degree of process involved but it rarely approaches normality. When so much of the production process is manual, there’s always that element of humanity involved - new ideas, some great, others less so - so this keeps us thinking all the time. And of course we have an ever-growing team of passionate and dedicated people out and about spreading the word at food and drink events, plus no small number of trophies to polish. How would you describe Bathtub Gin in 3 words? Simple, crafted excellence What makes Bathtub Gin different and why should gin fans try it? They will almost certainly not have tried a cold compounded gin before, certainly not one that tastes as good and which has won so many accolades. If they are exploring gin as a category, we believe Bathtub is a “must try”. What's your favourite way to drink Bathtub Gin? Any and all ways really - the first question to sort out is are we in the mood for Bathtub Gin, Navy Strength, Cask Aged or Old Tom. At the moment the answer is mostly Cask Aged and in a Negroni but with summer coming, that’s changing. What are your favourite gins (other than your own of course!)? We’re huge fans of That Boutique-y Gin Company – it’s the most exciting concept (independent gin bottlers for those of you who’ve not seen them) we’ve seen in years, and their Moonshot Gin, which is made with botanicals that have been sent into space, is incredible. Beyond that, we’ve got a lot of love for FEW Spirits, St George, and a whole raft of other American gins. The richer, rounder flavour profile appeals to us as fans of Bathtub. What's next for Ableforth's? Many. Many plans. Watch this space. Comments are closed.
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