Raspberry Gin / Raspberry and Blueberry Gin / Pomegranate Gin

A flavoured gin's the thing. 

Raspberry Gin and Tonic

Added Value
It's good marketing -  grow your range of products and you expand your brand. How many different bottles of gin do you have on your gin wall? We went to one house and there were 12 different bottles on the central kitchen island. That's a lot of dead stock. On the other end of the scale, Gin and Juice in Cheltenham has 350 different gins and growing.
Take a look at the prices and the flavoured ones are substantially more expensive than normal gin. Like the difference in price between fresh salmon and smoked salmon which is 2 - 3 times as much. That kind of makes you want to make your own flavoured gins in itself. 

Last year I was experimenting with different flavours. Economics aside, the main reason you'll want to investigate flavoured gins is for all the amazing variations you can serve up to your friends that they'll never be able to buy in a shop.

Thirty years ago my great aunt was experimenting with a lemon and orange vodka liqueur - vodka, caster sugar, orange zest & lemon zest. You put them in a bottle and shook it up once a day for a month. One month later it was ready to go and was like a variation on cointreau. You could use a cheap vodka because you get the flavour from the citrus.
So I took the same idea - alcohol, sugar, fruit and here you can see the results.

I also found that you need to put these in the fridge while they are maturing. You might think the alcohol will preserve the fruit, which it does, but left out of the fridge it can start fermenting and go sour.

Raspberry and Blueberry Cotswold Gin

It's almost sacrilege to add things to Cotswolds Gin - it tastes so good in itself, but I had some left over from a tasting menu event. There were also raspberries and blueberries left from their dessert so I brought those 3 things together.

Fruit Gin Ratios
A good ratio is:
250g Fruit/ berries
100g Caster sugar
70cl Bottle of gin

Put your ingredients ideally in a kilner jar or other vessel that isn't plastic. I found storing this in a plastic container as I did with the pomegranate gin, below, the plastic can taint the contents.

Pomegranate Gordon's Gin

Taking the idea from my pomegranate rum, I tried a gin version. A lovely sweet-sharp taste. You crunch the seeds as you drink to release their flavour. Makes me think a cranberry gin could be really good for Christmas time, though it would need more sugar for the sharpness of the cranberries.