Okay – this is a big one.

Those of you who follow me on twitter may have seen a few somewhat maniacal tweets surrounding the equipment we recently purchased (a rotary vacuum still, complete with recirculating chiller), and today, with great pride, I can formally reveal what I’ve been slaving over for the last few months, and the reasoning behind it.

You see – I love gin, me. By jebus it’s a fantastic drink. What’s been bugging me for a while about the gin category as a whole, though, is that there’s not been any attempt to delve a bit deeper into its main ingredient – Juniper.

More...

Well, he’s been at it again.

We try to rein him in from time to time, but the man just won’t listen. After his last couple of excursions into the world of gin  - a Sloe Gin made with half a pound of sloes per bottle, and an Old Tom which I’m reasonably sure he made just because he likes drinking Martinezzes (Martinez? Martinezs? Martiniz?), he’s been at it again with this, a cask-aged offering made using the superb Bathtub Gin as the base.

The Professor has acquired a stock of Octave casks (only 50 litres capacity as opposed to the more usual 250 litre hogshead) which have been previously used to store whisky (and prior to that, either Sherry, or Bourbon) for his newest creation. This means that in comparison to other cask-aged gins, there is a significantly higher surface area to volume ratio (roughly double as I’m sure you’ve all worked out by now). This, in turn, means that the gin will interact with the cask faster, making the 6-months-ish that the gin spends in cask lends a fantastic amount of flavour to the gin. 

The casks used to store and mature the Gin are used a maximum of twice, before being retired and used as garden furniture / plant pots / props in a massive game of real-life Donkey Kong I’m planning for the warehouse staff in a couple of weeks. Not the last one. Definitely not that. 

More...

It all began last month, when I was invited by the founders of the London Cocktail Society to go up to London and present our range of bitters to their members. Throughout the course of our conversation it became clear that we could potentially do even more than this, and turn the event into a bitters blending competition.

Throughout the course of another couple of conversations (and over a few lovely cocktails with The Cocktail Geek at the superb Shaker and Company), it became clear that not only was it our moral duty to bottle and release the winning bitters, but that more research at the bar was required as to which cocktails exactly contained bitters, and what were cocktails again, and who are you and why am I here? Ah. Cocktails.

More...

Okay – I’m not going to lie – it’s busy around here at the moment. Anyone would think that there’s some kind of holiday impending…

Anyway, it turns out that despite the craziness of the ‘tide, my wife’s sister wasn’t prepared to move her Hen Party back by a couple of weeks to accommodate the fact that I’d promised to develop a bespoke cocktail for them, and was quite busy at the moment. Something to do with already having booked her plane tickets over from Australia or something. Selfish if you ask me…

Anyway – yesterday evening, I finally settled in to make a cocktail both sufficiently special for the event, but which also reflected the turning season, and seeking to get the most out of our new Bathtub Gin.

Ahh yes, it’s time to announce the winner of our little caption contest! We’ve had loads of brilliant suggestions, and many, many captions which began “say hello to my little…”.

Before we announce the winner, here’s another crudely doctored image of Tony Montana, chilling out in his study with a fine bottle of Bathtub Gin. More...

It’s hot today in Tunbridge Wells. Really hot.

Whilst it’s never too hot for whisky (by Jingo I could go for a Great King Street Highball right about now), the palate does tend to crave something a bit more refreshing and crisp on occasion. If the last few days’ sales of our new Bathtub Gin are anything to go by, it’s Gin that the nation turns to when things start to hot up.

If I’m honest, I thought I’d stowed the trusty flip-flops away for good, but they’ve made a re-appearance. Here they are next to the Christmas bitters: More...

New product day is always a good day, and today is no exception as we announce the release of Professor Cornelius Ampleforth's Bathtub Gin. Like anyone named Cornelius, Professor Ampleforth would never put his fine name to a gin unless it was really very good. So, as could be expected, Bathtub Gin is a truly marvellous recreation of the gins of yore, produced in a very traditional, entirely small-batch and, dare I say it, artisan manner. Every little detail, from the beautiful packaging, to the superb liquid inside the bottle has had as much attention paid to it as you’d give to a talking dog wearing a top hat and monocle, or as you’d give Morgan Freeman if he gave you advice on anything. More...