Gin Guide: Every Style EXPLAINED!

there are so many different gins out there at the moment from all different distilleries and all different types of gin so how do we understand them all and then the gin label how do we get through all the jargon when we're trying to pick a gym and tell the differences between all these different types when we're at the liquor store well that's what we're talking about today so grab a drink and grab a seat because we're starting right now g'day folks my name's tim and welcome to tim and tonic where we discover the world's best gins and how to drink them so the first thing you're going to notice on the label is probably the brand name so you're probably familiar with some ones like tanqueray or even bombay sapphire two of the world's biggest and best-known brands well known for being relatively good quality at a fairly affordable price and yes the brand name is a little bit of a hint into what the gin is going to taste like because you know each brand has their own signature flavor profile but it's not quite like say whiskey or something like that where the brand has a very distinctive style with some subtle differences between the different kinds of whiskey with gin there are some brands that have dramatically different tasting gins like for example both of these gins here bombay sapphire and tanqueray they have flavored gins in their range which are gonna taste nothing like these two now if you're well versed in gin the first hint to what any gin might taste like it's pretty obvious because a lot of the gins these days actually list the botanicals on the bottle like i mean look at this bombay sapphire here you can see all down the sides of it they list you all the different types of botanicals now i've said it on the channel many times to be called gin it has to have juniper in it as one of the botanicals but every gin has juniper in it so it's not really going to tell you much about what's different between the different types because so look at those secondary botanicals because they're going to give you the hint as to the flavor profile if you're new around here you might be wondering exactly what botanicals are well gin is essentially a spirit distilled with botanicals which can be anything herbs nuts seeds fruits roots pretty much you name it it can be a botanical and other than juniper which is the number one botanical engine and has to be in gin for it to be called gin there are no limitations on what else you can put in there and for that reason that's why you need to look at those secondary botanicals to get a hint at what the gin might taste like now there's a very good reason why i chose both of these bottles first and that's because they both say on the bottle london dryjen and now you're probably thinking tim why are you talking about this because it's pretty obvious london it must be made in london and dry it's just not a sweet gin now unfortunately i've got news for you that's not quite correct so london dry gin is actually a style it doesn't anymore have anything to do with where it was made and yes both of these gins were actually founded in london they're very old-school very traditional brands but the tanqueray distillery no longer exists in london it's distilled in scotland and bombay sapphire yes it's made in london now but for quite a long time it was made up in the north of england so this reference to london is more of a historical stylistic reference rather than actually where it's made and now the second part of this is to be called london dry there's actually quite a rigorous set of standards that the gin must adhere to in able to be able to put that on the bottle and the really quick version of it is this to be called london dry it has to be above 37.5 alcohol it has to be distilled and then after distillation you can't add anything to the spirit other than water and that's really where this dry part comes into it because if you can't add anything to the spirit other than water after distillation well sugars can't carry a cross distillation they get left on the other side so that means that you can't add any sugar so it's not going to be sweet so it's dry so if you see london dry there's also quite a typical flavor profile associated with it it is probably the most punchy of juniper out of all of the gins you can find which to me tastes kind of woody like pine or woody like the stems of rosemary you're also going to find in there some citrusy flavors and usually a bit of spice some kind of peppery flavors and that's because these are all traditional gin botanicals now this word dry is starting to appear on all different other bottles like for example we've got here we've got the botanist which says islay dry gin now isla being a little tiny island off the coast of scotland which is very very famous for its single mop scotch there's no real legal protections around this word dry a lot of these new producers now they want to associate their brand with where the actual distillery comes from what botanicals they're using that kind of thing to give it a sense of time and place so they're adopting this term dry as the same idea as london dry so nothing added after distillation other than water but associating it to where it's actually made now before we put them all away there's just one other term i want to talk about quickly on this bombay sapphire bottle here and that's this term vapor infused now what that means is traditionally when you distill gin you chuck in your spirit you chuck your botanicals into essentially a big boiler all together boil it up condense it down there you go bob's your uncle you have gin cut it with some water london dry but if it says vapor infused the botanicals actually don't go into the spirit the botanicals get hung in some netting or a basket and then rather than it touching the liquid directly it gets gently steamed as the liquid boils so that means if it says vapor infused the flavor profile is going to be lighter delicate brighter it captures those top notes of the botanicals really well but leaves behind those more earthy base notes so speaking of the spirit coming off of the still it comes off at a really high abv much higher than these kind of ones that you're seeing which are 37.5 percent or above you know it can come off 60 70 or more depending on the distiller's method and so some distillers might choose to not cut it down as much and then we have navy strength gin so the only defining characteristic of navy strength gin is it must be above 57 alcohol these days largely navy strength it's just a marketing term say kind of overproof or extra strong gin but there's a little bit of tradition behind it whereby back in the day when they were rationing out gin on navy ships you know they wanted to make sure that if they spilled the gin on the gunpowder which was stored in the same area by the way they wanted to make sure that the gunpowder would still light on fire and they discovered at this strength of exactly 57 that was the point where it would still ignite absolutely perfectly now while there's no regulation around what a navy strength gin should taste like it really does share on the whole those same characteristics of a london dry and generally speaking it's made in that exact same way as a london dry gin it just happens to be a little bit stronger but what that extra abv and strength does is you know gin you mix it not many people drink gin neat or straight like this that means that you get more flavor in there because you're adding less water there's less dilution so it's more of that flavoursome spirit so essentially the easiest way to think of navy strength gin is it's just like a regular dry gym but in hd now another really well known type of gin would have to be slogin now slogin a little bit easier to understand i mean the color and the name might just give it away a little bit so this style of gin is infused with slow berries and this comes after that distillation with the other botanicals so this means it retains all the color all the sweetness and all the acidity as well now these slowberries also known as hawthorne berries technically closer to a plum than a berry they grow pretty readily in the uk and yes they do have some sweetness but they tend to be a little bit more on the acidic side so usually when someone's making a slogin they'll add extra sugar as well which makes it quite a sweet gin and also a lot of the time the slogins tend to be lower alcohol as low as 25 and technically under that 37.5 percent in most countries it's not a gin anymore it is now a gin based liqueur but because of tradition slogin has an exception to that it can just simply be called slogin it doesn't have to be labeled slow gin liqueur but if you want to compare apples to apples then slow gin it's more of a liqueur so what are we tasting with slogin obviously there's a lot of sweetness a lot of fruitiness you know those richer darker fruits like cherries plums berries if it's a good quality slow gin as well there's usually a nice level of acidity to balance out the sweetness and finally the traditional gin botanicals they're in there but they're a little bit more subtle and play second fiddle to all those fruity flavors and now while we're talking about slogin i want to bring over an aussie version of that style which is four pillars bloody shiraz gin now this student down here in australia has spawned a whole category of gin there's these wine grape infusions popping up from all different distilleries everywhere and the idea being that australia is really famous for growing wine grapes so how can we make a kind of australian take on that traditional slow style now being labeled shiraz gin a lot of people commonly think that oh they've just mixed it with chiraz the wine but that's actually not the case so they make it in the exact same way as this slow style of gym they take the whole shiraz grapes because shiraz just refers to a specific variety of grape and they infuse that into the gin base now red wine grapes tend to be a little bit sweeter than slows so you get a lot of natural sugars into these types of gin so even if you're not a big wine drinker because it's not wine it's unfermented grapes it's actually quite a bit different and you should give it a go if you're a fan of slogens not only do i find these shiraz based gins tend to be a touch sweeter sometimes than slogins they also tend to be more complex and maybe i'm a little bit biased but absolutely delicious as well now there is another time when you might see the word shiraz or a wine grape on a bottle which doesn't mean this style of gin and that's when the word shiraz or pinot noir whatever it may be is combined with the words barrel aged so perfect time to bring up the next style of jin which is barrel age gin so combining those words shiraz barrel age gym means that the barrel before it held gin it held shiraz in it and that is the actual wine unlike the shiraz gin which was the whole grapes but generally speaking most of the time barrel-aged gin doesn't come from ex-wine barrels it comes from ex-whiskey barrels and the reason for that is quite simple whiskey always has to be aged in a barrel to be called whiskey whereas wine doesn't have to be aged in a barrel to be called wine and even certain types of whiskey they have to go into a brand new barrel every time so what do they do with these barrels when they're done with them well maybe they use them to make barrel aged gin and for gin there's no minimum period of aging it has to go into the barrel so you kind of have to see each gin how long it is aged for which is how much influence that oak and that wood is gonna have and the most common type of barrel is ex bourbon because bourbon barrels are that type of whiskey where you can only use the barrel ones so taste-wise you can kind of think of a barrel-aged gin as a hybrid between a gin and a whiskey and that barrel influence is much more subtle than the fruit influence in a slow gym so those kind of botanicals the base ones shine through a lot better and yet and then those oat barrels yes they give a little bit of a whiskey like taste and those flavors you're gonna taste are usually vanillas coconuts toffees brown sugars you know those kind of sweet dark sugar flavors so we're kind of going back in history with these styles of gins we're exploring now you know back in the day barrels was just a convenient way to transport gin because they didn't have modern inventions like stainless steel tanks or you know glass bottles were not as efficient at moving big quantities so inadvertently it got barrel aged just out of convenience so staying on that history train we're going to talk about bathtub gin so this word bathtub probably doesn't sound very appealing but again it's a really old school traditional way to describe it it's not made in that way anymore so the defining characteristic of bathtub gin is this bathtub gin is not distilled like that london dry gin that we talked about rather than being distilled you take your base spirit you put the botanicals in it you leave it to infuse strain it off that's it no distillation just an infusion of botanicals into the spirit and this one i've got here is a very modern one from a distillery right here in australia called prohibition liquidco which make their kind of rendition of those old-school styles of spirits and you might be able to see there this one's got a little bit of color that generally speaking doesn't come from barrel aging like the one we talked about before that's simply all those spices and juniper they use give a little bit of color to the gin but sometimes in certain cases they do combine styles so you get bathtub combined with barrel aged and these kind of more modern interpretations they might include an element of distillation and infusion but traditionally it was purely infusion and now the reason why it's called bathtub gin is because it originated in america during prohibition back then they couldn't buy alcohol legally it was completely illegal the only way they could get it is from more industrial sources rather than drinkable sauces so to make it taste nice what they did is they infused botanicals into it in their bathtubs because that was just a big vessel that they had in their house that was inconspicuous that people didn't give a second look to [Music] but nowadays it's more modern interpretations of that classic style so it's really well made it's really tasty the difference between a bathtub gin and a london dry style gin in terms of the flavor profile because there's no distillation you get much more of those earthy base notes those spice notes and also you get a little bit more bitterness coming through too okay now let's go a little bit further back in history than bathtub gin and we have some old tom jin so what does old tonjin mean well quite simply it means that the gin is lightly sweetened and flavor-wise comparing it back to that london dry style of gin very similar in terms of botanicals that make it up and flavor profile just has that added sweetness and that added sweetness could come from pretty much anything it could be plain sugar it could be honey i've even seen one with maple syrup so imagine classic dry style of gin but lightly sweetened and all tom jin has quite a fascinating story it comes about back in the kind of 1700s in england where they tried to tax the hell out of jin because there was this gin craze going on and people were just getting drunk and falling over on the streets and all sorts of you know socioeconomic problems and all that these taxes did was drive the production and sale of gin underground and you know back then the technology of distillation wasn't as good as what it is now so they had to add sugar and sweeteners to kind of round out the rough edges but specifically this old tom name comes about because the way you would buy gin as there would be these cat plaques on walls in london and you would go up to them and you would put a coin in this cat plug and there'll be a bartender on the other side and he would dispense a shot of gin which would come out through this cat block and then last but not least a bit of a curveball because this one on the bottle it actually doesn't say gin at all but it wouldn't be complete without talking about genova so pronunciation spelling i'm not going to get too much into that but genova geneva geneva however you want to say it completely fine and you might even see it spelt in different ways with a j or a g also completely fine and like i said technically not a gin because it doesn't say gin on it but we have to talk about this one because it's the precursor to all gin so this is where the brits took their inspiration from gin from when you know back in the day they are fighting in these wars on continental europe and they discovered this geneva which the dutch people were drinking and so what's the difference between genova and gin well simply genova isn't made with a neutral base spirit it's made with what they call a malt wine which i guess in a way you could really describe it as kind of like an unaged whiskey but then the way it becomes more like a gin is it's actually flavoured with juniper so again we have another style of spirit that's kind of blurring the lines between gin and whiskey and you can see this one that i've got here has a little bit of color to it so jennifer's come in both barrel aged and not barrel-aged variants if you see a bottle that says ood jennifer on it that simply translates to old so it means it's been barrel-aged but there's plenty of clear unaged versions of jennifer out there too in terms of taste obviously that defining character comes down to using a base for it that's not neutral so you get these kind of really malty fresh baked bread grain cereal kind of notes to the jennifer but on top of that obviously it has some juniper in there too so you get those woody rosemary stem kind of flavors and obviously depending on the brand there might be some other flavors and botanicals in there too so guys after all that you're probably wondering how do i drink all these different gins what drinks go well with all these different styles well you probably want to click through the video that's popping up here right now to find out all about that but i hope you enjoyed the video guys cheers see you next time

Channel: Tim and Tonic

Views: 21,840

Keywords: gin, sloe gin, london dry gin, genever, navy strength gin, bathtub gin, barrel aged gin, gin & tonic, gin and tonic, what is gin, shiraz gin, old tom gin, how to drink, styles of gin, modern gin, old tom, how is gin made youtube, old tom gin vs london dry, how is gin made, gin guide garnish, gin guide, gin botanicals, london dry, best gin, gin review, london dry gin how to drink, london dry vs old tom, what is gin made of

Id: 5UW2FDUqgpw

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2022