Task 24: Make my own bottle of gin

To be honest I like most forms of alcohol and gin is no exception. If Peter and I are at home, our favourite drink in the evening is a gin martini, made with neat gin and just a whisper of vermouth, two ice cubes and two green olives. The idea of making my own gin was naturally appealing and I was pleased to find that there was a half-day course in London which sounded exactly what I was after.

What I hadn't realised was that Peter, who had seemed unusually relaxed about what to buy for my Christmas stocking presents (a tradition I insisted on maintaining when we were married), had been busy looking at my 60@60 list for ideas. One of his purchases was a gin-making kit, so I didn't bother to book the course and looked forward instead to breaking open the kit when we got back from South Africa:

The instructions looked extremely simple - crush the juniper berries to release the aroma, add vodka, leave to steep for 24 hours, strain and remove the berries, and that was it. There were suggestions of what could be added to create a more unusual taste, such as cardamom, Earl Grey tea and lavender, "once you are confident with your gin making". As I had enough vodka and berries to make three batches using the glass bottle supplied, and the process seemed so straightforward, I planned to make one plain batch and two with various added ingredients. As with many of my plans, it didn't quite work out like that.

The berries felt rather tough and took a fair bit of crushing:

They smelled promising, though, with a distinct scent of gin:

Having poured them into the bottle and then the vodka on top, I wasn't sure it should look like this:

Still, the colour seemed right and maybe the distribution of the berries wasn't significant. Within two hours, however, the liquid had turned a suspicious shade of yellow and by the next evening it was a deeply unpleasant brown:

It didn't look promising, but maybe it would taste better than it looked. Unfortunately not:

It was horribly bitter and I gave up on it, though Peter gamely finished the bottle over the next few evenings.

I decided it would be premature to launch into additional ingredients, so I made a second batch using the same method, except this time I only lightly bruised the berries. The result was a much better colour but it still tasted fairly awful:

Clearly I hadn't yet mastered the technique, so I used the remaining berries and vodka to make a final batch. I thought the problem might be the strength of the juniper, so I squeezed a couple of berries to release some of the aroma and simply poured the rest straight into the bottle and added the vodka. During the evening I kept popping into the kitchen to see how it was progressing, and was disappointed to find it was slowly turning deep yellow:

It turned out just as bitter as the previous lot, so once again it will be left to Peter to finish it. If I have another go, which is looking unlikely, I think I'll halve the number of juniper berries in the recipe and increase the quantity of vodka. All in all, though, it would be simpler - albeit less interesting - to revert to buying gin from the supermarket.