How Not to Make Gin: Myths, Cloudiness, and Equipment Traps

Gin is popular, which means gin advice is everywhere. Some of it helps. Some of it quietly makes your gin weaker, less distinctive, or less repeatable.

Use this as a ‘don’t get fooled’ checklist: common myths about botanicals, cloudiness, infusion methods, and equipment decisions that can push you into the wrong process for the gin you actually want to make.

The thread tying it all together is simple: decide your style target first, then choose techniques that move you toward it instead of away from it.

Quick summary

Context: why ‘gin advice’ goes wrong

A lot of gin ‘rules’ are consultant shortcuts: they solve a symptom (like cloudiness) by making the product lighter, not by helping you build the best gin you can.

So you’re going to evaluate advice by one question: does it increase your control over flavor, or does it reduce flavor and then call that ‘quality’?

Okay, that was history of gin, how to make gin, and especially the formula. Use the formula and try to blend it together with where you want your flavors to be. And now how not to make gin, and that has to do with a lot of anecdotical stories that I heard around gin.

Myth 1: more juniper varieties means more complexity

A common claim is that multiple juniper varieties create a more complex gin (borrowed from the idea that multiple grains can create a more complex whiskey). In practice, this does not hold for gin.

A safety warning is also included: juniperus communis is the standard juniper berry; juniperus virginiana is similar but less intense; and several other varieties are poisonous (even if the poison may not carry over in distillation).

There are so many people out there that understand everything about alcohol, at least it seems to be that way, because maybe you come from a place where I came from once, not knowing anything and looking up to them and saying like, wow, they have the answers, right? And then I started doing it, they started doing, following their advice, and it turned out that not all the advice was true. Most of it was anecdotical stories of people that thought they knew a little bit more, but were too lazy to do the test themselves.

Myth 2: cloudy gin is bad

We've done a significant load of tests the last 10 years. And here's a few things that you do not need to do, or you do not want to do, while making gin. One story says multiple varieties of juniper create a more complex gin, and that comes from the whiskey business.

What cloudiness is attributed to

Cloudiness is explained as essential oils coming over in a bold gin run. At high collection strength (the example given is around 70%), solvency is high and oils stay dissolved. When you dilute down toward bottling strength (for example 40%), solvency drops and the gin can turn foggy.

If you work with multiple grains, you get a more complex whiskey. It doesn't mean it's true for juniper or gin, and in fact, it's not true. If you want to use anything other than juniperus communis, which is normal juniper berry, maybe you want to use juniperus virginiana, which comes from, well, virginiana in the United States and some other states.

How to respond: dilute, don’t filter first

This is good news: cloudiness is the moment of taste saturation. You can dilute with more GNS (or vodka at the same strength) and water until the haze lifts.

Same flavors as juniper, only less intense, so you need more of them. There are six, seven other varieties of juniper out there, and they're all poisonous. The poison probably doesn't come over in distillation, but I wouldn't use them anyhow.

Myth 3: vapor infusion is automatically better

So gin has a lot of flavor oils in there, essential oils that come from the herbs and the berries that we re-distill. They come over, and your distillate comes over at, for example, 70 percent. Seventy percent means there's a lot of solvency power.

Vapor infusion: lighter style

Vapor infusion is placing botanicals in the column so rising vapor extracts lighter aromas. A reason given for why it tends to be lighter: vapor density is about 1/1000 of liquid density, so fewer flavor molecules are carried over.

Alcohol is a great solvent, so all of those flavor oils are in solution. Now, you want to bottle your drink, right? Solvency power goes down because the alcohol percentage goes down, and all of a sudden, your gin clouds up and becomes very foggy.

Boiler infusion: bolder style

Boiler infusion is placing botanicals in the boiler. It produces a heavier, bolder style with more essential oil extraction.

This is a really, really bad problem, most of the gin consultants used to say. And then we came to the market, and we said, like, no, congratulations. It's actually a good thing, because the moment you bring your dilution to the point where it starts to cloud up is the moment of taste saturation.

Myth 4: separate every botanical for production

Distilling botanicals separately is useful during development because it lets you blend after the fact and adjust more easily.

But once your recipe, putting botanicals together creates a more integrated, ‘married’ result.

More essential oils cannot be dissolved in this alcohol-water mixture. But maybe I want to make a lighter style. Fine, dilute it with more GNS and water.

Myth 5: vacuum distillation equals better flavor

Vacuum distillation is presented as a compelling story: lower boiling points sound ‘better’ for delicate ingredients. The position here is blunt: if it does not translate into better flavor in the glass, it is not worth the extra money or complexity.

But if you create a light style to start with, you can never make it bolder and bigger in flavors. If you create a very big, heavy-flavored gin, you can always dilute it with more alcohol and water to create more and more at lower total taste levels. Clouded gin means you got over an amazing amount of flavor, for which I congratulate you.

Do you need a dedicated gin still?

A common claim is that you only need a separate still for gin if your still material traps botanical oils and creates contamination risk. Copper is vulnerable because oils can stick in corrosion/rust. Stainless steel is easier: a cold-water flush for about five minutes is enough to switch products without detergents.

Dilute with neutral GNS or with vodka of the same strength, and all of a sudden, the cloud, the haziness will lift after you add maybe twice the amount what you already made, and you have maximum saturation gin. You have the most flavorful gin on the market. Now, another anecdotal story that was, I think it started 10, 12 years ago when Bombay Sapphire became very famous, and it became very famous because they did something different.

A simple procedure

Not really, it's been around for centuries, but still, they highlighted it, and that's vapor infusion. You can put your herbs basically in the column and have the gases touch these herbs and take over flavors, or you can put all of your herbs in the boiler. Now, if you put them in the boiler, you get over more flavors, and the weird thing is that if you get over more flavors and you dilute like we spoke about before, your gin gets cloudy.

Boiler strength and steeping

A simple procedure is given: fill the boiler about 50% with spirit at 60 proof, add juniper berries, let them rest overnight, then top up with water to bring the boiler to about 30% before adding the rest of the botanicals.

If you do vapor infusion, because vapor density is only 1,000th of liquid density as a general rule of thumb, the amount of flavor molecules you get over is much less. So, if you dilute a vapor-infused gin, you're never going to get a cloudy gin. So, the consultants of old say like, oh, you need vapor infusion because that solves your cloudy problem right away.

Cuts: small heads, stop early

Cutting guidance is simple: take only a small cut at the beginning (to keep citrus/lime lift), and stop fairly early because the goal is not a full three-dimensional tails-heavy profile.

Cloudiness is not a problem, it's just a sign of getting over a lot of flavor. You can solve that by adding more alcohol and water until the cloud lifts. Vapor infusion is good, but it creates a lighter style.

Higher is drier

A final style lever: higher boiler strength (for example 40–45%) creates a drier style (linked to London Dry), while around 30% produces a more mellow result.

Continue with Extractor Distillation Tools: Boiler vs Vapor Infusion: Flavor Intensity and Overcooking Risk to build directly on this foundation.

Boiler infusion creates a much heavier and bolder style. My preferred method, because I think as a craft distiller, you need to make products that actually pack a punch. Some people like to distill every ingredient separately.

Key Takeaways