Author Topic: Gin!  (Read 31166 times)

Mrs Pingu

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #150 on: 24 December, 2017, 06:27:43 pm »
Oh, Spirit of Hven is also delish.

Ian, I've not had any German gins other than Monkey. What do you rate?
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

Mrs Pingu

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #151 on: 25 December, 2017, 02:33:18 pm »
Today's haul.
2017-12-25_02-28-17 by The Pingus, on Flickr
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

ian

Re: Gin!
« Reply #152 on: 26 December, 2017, 06:16:04 pm »
Oh, Spirit of Hven is also delish.

Ian, I've not had any German gins other than Monkey. What do you rate?

Granit, The Duke, Brandstifter, Bavarka, Elephant. I think we have a few more acquired on various trips, I really need to catalogue the collection.

I like Bavarka as it's the potato one. The Duke is rather tasty.

Medicinal is perhaps a better description, I sort of meant they're distinctly juniper-based (as a gin should be) but also rather complicated.

Hven is nice as is Hernö. Not tried the others. I've really run out of space. I may have to shift the dead cat.

citoyen

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #153 on: 01 January, 2018, 12:16:00 am »
Try some Monkey 47 if you haven't, it's a good gateway into the German gins, and they tend to be complex and junipery rather than the lemon-and-more-lemon.

Looking back on my tasting notes from Christmas 2016, I can see that I did like the Monkey 47. Although, tbh, I spent most of last Christmas in a gin haze and don't know how I could possibly have remembered any of them in enough detail for my notes to be reliable.

Was at a do yesterday evening where I discovered the joys of the Negroni - a cocktail that is apparently quite fashionable but has passed me by until now. I do like a generous dash of Angostura in my G&T and the Campari in a Negroni has a similar effect. A very pleasant alternative to a Martini.

In other news, I got this as a stocking filler from Satan:


Much more pleasant than you'd imagine.
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Wowbagger

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #154 on: 09 November, 2019, 07:28:50 pm »
This thread seems a little ossified.

I am, relatively speaking, a novice gin drinker. For my entire life, save the past 18 months or so, I have eschewed gin as the choice of drink of golfers named Nigel. I'm not a golfer and I'm not called Nigel.

I have actually discovered that I'm quite fond of gin & tonic. I have just finished a bottle of Star of Bombay, which with Fever Tree tonic, was quite palatable.

What does the panel recommend as my next venture in gin drinking? Please bear in mind that it is more likely to be sampled if Waitrose sell it.
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Mrs Pingu

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #155 on: 09 November, 2019, 08:37:46 pm »
If you like Fever Tree, try lemonade, it's cheaper.
At least that's what I think of it. I suspect the invention of 'tonic' that doesn't taste like traditional tonic is a significant factor in the sudden popularity of gin & tonic.

Me, I like my gin to be like being punched in the face by a juniper bush and my tonic to be dirty Schweppes. I don't care if Schweppes isn't cool, it's tonic :) Getting quite hard to get hold of when dining out these days...
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

Re: Gin!
« Reply #156 on: 09 November, 2019, 08:54:42 pm »
Try the Cotswolds Dry Gin, packed with botanicals, and on offer at Waitrose at the moment.

Wowbagger

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #157 on: 09 November, 2019, 09:02:43 pm »
"Botanicals" always strikes me as being a poncey word for plants.
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Mrs Pingu

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #158 on: 09 November, 2019, 09:26:51 pm »
It depends on what botanicals you like.
My preference is for lots of juniper (Makar, but it's not subtle) or spice/liquorice (Achroous, Bobby's, Cotswold, Monkey 47, Wild Beer Schnoodlepip, Lone Wolf, Hven) or the odd stuff in between (Eden Hop gin). The Wild Beer Sleeping Lemons is so smooth & lemony you could sip it neat. Not recommended with Gordons & Tanqueray etc.
The floral stuff is not my cup of tea but YMMV.
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

ian

Re: Gin!
« Reply #159 on: 11 November, 2019, 09:59:58 am »
Monkey 47, if I recall, is available in Waitrose and is a very good gin. I like the poncy flowers in my botanicals, but then I have a degree in botany, so there. People like Hendricks, though once you've tried a couple of other gins, it's a bit one dimensional. Harringtons is a very nice and rather traditional. Avoid the flavoured stuff, I like my gin to taste like gin, not a sweet shop.

I can't abide the insipid Fever Tree tonic, I'm on the Schweppes wagon, it's a proper tonic which is what you need in a good G&T. But always take a neat sip of the gin so you know what it goes with and what it tastes like.

tonycollinet

  • No Longer a western province of Númenor
Re: Gin!
« Reply #160 on: 27 November, 2019, 11:49:59 pm »
On the tonic front, Aldi (again) tonic won a blind taste test by bartenders. It is at least as good as schweppes - better than FT in my opinion - and less than 35p / litre.

ElyDave

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #161 on: 03 December, 2019, 11:32:59 am »
Recently acquired a Tasmanian gin flavoured with black cardamom, comes through nice and subtle and doesn't overpower, unlike the psices in Ophir
“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” –Charles Dickens

Re: Gin!
« Reply #162 on: 06 December, 2019, 08:57:10 am »

ian

Re: Gin!
« Reply #163 on: 06 December, 2019, 08:57:41 pm »
Pickerings brussel sprout gin in my ginvent calendar. It's as green as you'd really like your urine to be. Honestly, you'd be demanding that people come into the toilet and look. I made this, you'd declare, like a proud parent.

Not that horrid, but I wouldn't buy a bottle.

I am developing a cold. I figure alcohol kills viruses. Do the math.

Re: Gin!
« Reply #164 on: 13 February, 2020, 12:27:49 pm »
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/feb/13/jay-rayner-why-am-i-supposed-to-like-gin-ruined-vodka


I think Ian ought to dive into the Graun's comment thread & defend his favourite tipple.    Ian vs Jay Rayner would be a splendiferous battle of words  :D
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ian

Re: Gin!
« Reply #165 on: 13 February, 2020, 09:04:59 pm »
Flavoured gin, like it's cellmate flavoured vodka, is criminal. I want gin to taste like gin, so the flavour should be juniper and other botanicals, be they from fox-soiled hedgerows or the verges of Swindon's top 10 car parks for dogging (though they'd have to fight urban foragers, of course, in their quest for urine-dressed leafery to serve to Jay) or indeed some beautific garden where the plants have been soothed by the lilting lullabies of angels.

Unfortunately, people do occasionally buy me flavoured vodka and for some reason and I neglect to murder them. I have a bottle of rhubarb and custard gin. Rhubard and custard. It's reprehensible. I like rhubarb. I like custard. I like gin. I don't want them in the same bottle. Worse, I have to drink it and espresso the words that's interesting.

I don't like vodka. There's the flavoured sort favoured by mid-twenties binge-drinkers, a cornucopia of foul flavours and colour that seem to span the gamut from radish to road-rash. But plain vodka mostly tastes like surgical spirit (and probably) is. People will tell you it tastes of something, how refined it is, oh those teasing little hints of a flavour. Frankly, that's like claiming you can smell the fart of someone on another continent. It's artisanal will claim someone with a beard like that improves matters. Have you had toffee-flavoured vodka? If not, avoid it like you would tuberculosis.

I won't fight Jay though. He knows jazz.

ElyDave

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #166 on: 16 February, 2020, 08:07:30 am »
So I can keep all my sloe gin, rhubarb gin, stawberry vodka all infused by my loving lab glassware to myself then?

No custard has been harmed in the making of my gin.

Sarcasm aside, I have tasted some very good infused vodkas and gins, where the addition is subtle enough not to just make it nasty.  I'm not keen so far on the Kendal Mint Cake flavoured, luridly coloured vodka thing soemone decided to buy me "for fun".  The fun part is making up contemprary sounding cocktails to force feed it to hipsters with their trousers rolled up and watch their brains fry as their taste buds try to strangle them at the same time as they have to love the next best thing 
“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” –Charles Dickens

ian

Re: Gin!
« Reply #167 on: 16 February, 2020, 06:45:20 pm »
Well, sloe gin is a thing (and the sloes complement juniper), I'm more referring to the practice of just taking some basic mass-produced gin or vodka and bunging in some flavouring additives and sweeteners and adding £10 to the price.

Reminds me of the time pack at university one of colleague decided for reasons that I suspect derive rational explanation to make mars bar-flavoured vodka, so he dropped a couple of mars bars in a large container filled with supermarket vodka and left them for a couple of months. The result looked someone had decanted a couple of turds and toilet water into the container.

Mrs Pingu

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #168 on: 16 February, 2020, 07:35:29 pm »
I got given some spiced plum & clementine gin for Xmas. Haven't opened it yet.
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

Feanor

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #169 on: 16 February, 2020, 07:44:25 pm »
Whist reading some of the back-story of the Ring of Bright Water, in relation to Kathleen Raine's curse upon the Rowan Tree, I discovered that Caorunn is an old Gaelic word for the Rowan.

Pingu

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #170 on: 16 February, 2020, 07:48:39 pm »
Well, sloe gin is a thing (and the sloes complement juniper), I'm more referring to the practice of just taking some basic mass-produced gin or vodka and bunging in some flavouring additives and sweeteners and adding £10 to the price.

Reminds me of the time pack at university one of colleague decided for reasons that I suspect derive rational explanation to make mars bar-flavoured vodka, so he dropped a couple of mars bars in a large container filled with supermarket vodka and left them for a couple of months. The result looked someone had decanted a couple of turds and toilet water into the container.

And?

Re: Gin!
« Reply #171 on: 16 February, 2020, 08:15:21 pm »
I have a friend who specialises in flavoured vodkas. The mint Aero is apparently somewhat strange. The black jelly baby is pretty good.  The Fisherman's Friend is best avoided.
"No matter how slow you go, you're still lapping everybody on the couch."

ElyDave

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Re: Gin!
« Reply #172 on: 16 February, 2020, 10:01:44 pm »
Well, sloe gin is a thing (and the sloes complement juniper), I'm more referring to the practice of just taking some basic mass-produced gin or vodka and bunging in some flavouring additives and sweeteners and adding £10 to the price.

Reminds me of the time pack at university one of colleague decided for reasons that I suspect derive rational explanation to make mars bar-flavoured vodka, so he dropped a couple of mars bars in a large container filled with supermarket vodka and left them for a couple of months. The result looked someone had decanted a couple of turds and toilet water into the container.

I restricted myself to black pepper and chilli vodkas whilst a PSO. I think my most outlandish, but oddly good was earl grey tea homebrew wine. Not tried that one again.
“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” –Charles Dickens

ian

Re: Gin!
« Reply #173 on: 17 February, 2020, 10:10:01 am »
Well, sloe gin is a thing (and the sloes complement juniper), I'm more referring to the practice of just taking some basic mass-produced gin or vodka and bunging in some flavouring additives and sweeteners and adding £10 to the price.

Reminds me of the time pack at university one of colleague decided for reasons that I suspect derive rational explanation to make mars bar-flavoured vodka, so he dropped a couple of mars bars in a large container filled with supermarket vodka and left them for a couple of months. The result looked someone had decanted a couple of turds and toilet water into the container.

And?

Well, I've never drunk toilet water, but I am sure it tasted better. Since he hadn't bothered to macerate the chocolately matter, it was basically supermarket vodka with a vague chocolate aftertaste. As we were students, it got drunk, of course.