Quick Gin Using Diatomaceous Earth

Have you ever wondered why commercial gin is a transparent industrial pure looking liquid? Unless you are a total spirit geek like me, then probably not! But the answer is very possibly here:

Once upon a time a clever guy at the local gin distillery thought that people would go crazy about a drink that looked pure and clean and still had the flavour of gin. He devised some elaborate modifications to his machinery and ended up putting a large mesh basket in the pipework in which he put the juniper berries and a few other token botanicals. He then took the resulting product to his boss and demonstrated to him that this fine looking spirit still tasted like gin. His boss scoffed at the idea of it as it lacked the 'body' of the regular gin and they would never get the same strength of flavour. However, he took some of it to the board of directors and they thought it was a fantastic 'gimmicky' way of getting ahead of the competition. Soon, all gin throughout the land was made in this way and the days of the old orange stuff were left far behind.

In this very simple but revolutionary recipe we're just going to use a spirit base such as vodka or commercial gin and jazz it up with 25g of dried juniper berries to produce the most incredibly tasty spirit you'll ever come across within about 2 hours start to finish!

Why is it revolutionary? Because it uses Diatomaceous earth for filtration - never before seen on the Instructables website! ...... ¡Viva la Revolución!

Difficulty:	. . . . . . . . . .
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Hazards:	. . . . . . . . . .	Diatomaceous earth dust harmful

Equipment and Ingredients

Fine mesh straining bag 22 x 22 cm
1 litre mason / kilner jar
3 litre mason / kilner jat
25g dried juniper berries
1 litre blender / food processor with grinder attachment
Weighing scales accurate to 1 gram
1 litre of commercial gin or vodka
2.4 litre water filter
200g calcined Diatomaceous earth / Kieselguhr (hazardous when inhaled)
Dust mask

Process the Berries

Weigh out 25g of dried juniper berries and grind them up in the food processor grinder attachment for about 60 seconds. Pour this into the 1 litre blender jug, add half the spirit and mix for about 10 seconds. Now top up to 1 litre with more spirit.

Now pour the whole lot into the 3 litre mason jar which has the straining bag attached as in the photo above. The bag acts as a filter which will take out most of the solid components. The straining bag is attached to the rim of the jar with rubber bands in such a way as to form a small hanging pocket. The lid can still be closed with a good seal on the rim. In theory, this jar could then be left to stand for about 3 days for all the cloudiness to disappear to the bottom, but that's not so quick is it?

Filtering the Cloudy Gin

The cloudiness can be removed very quickly using the water filter and diatamous earth. The water filter itself won't remove the particles as it's not a proper filter - it contains a lot of ionic exchange resin beads for removing chemicals and metals but little else. Wearing a dust mask, gently pour in the 200g of diatamaceous earth and top up the jar with the cloudy gin. The first batch of fluid will probably not be bright and clear yet, but do not dispare as we will pour this back into the top again until it starts to work. Very soon you will have nice clean looking liquid in the bottom of the filter jug as in the photo above.

Tasting Session Video

The first part of this video is tasting my other product, the Sloe Gin, but a little later this is contrasted with the Quick Gin, which seemed to have a better reception!

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