Visit the Pencil & Spoon site




Whatwould happen if I added Cascade hops, which give a great burst of floral and citrus to beer, to a bottle of gin? I couldn’t resistfinding out as soon as that thought has buried itself into my brain.


Iput a bottle of gin in the fridge. I didn’t want a pungent, nasty booze soup and I figured that putting hops into the gin when it’s fridge temperature would slow everything down and give me somecontrol. There must be some kind of science to doing this but I didn’t know it,so just hoped for the best as I poured around 500ml of gin into a teapot, savingsome back in case I over-hopped it and could dilute it back down. Then I addedthe hops, counting out 5 pellets and adding them in. I left them for two hours,then four, then six. When I wasn’t getting much hop flavour I added 5 morepellets and left them overnight, giving them a shake in the morning. Then Iadded 5 more pellets and gave it another 24 hours...




15pellets and a day and a half later it was ready. The aroma was gin plus Cascade.Perfect. Just imagine that background grapefruit pith kick of Cascade. I doublestrained it to get rid of as much hop trub as possible and my slightlygreen-tinged hopped gin was ready to drink.


Imade a G&T and added a slice of grapefruit to enhance the hop flavour,though it didn’t need it – the Cascade shone through the middle adding an extrabitterness and more wonderful aromatics to the drink.




NowI want to buy a case of gin and take a load of sealable bags and raid a hopstore to see what other varieties could work... I’m thinking Citra or Amarillo,especially flowers, would be great. And I want to try a beer made withall the gin botanicals. Anyone made that? Imagine a wit made with juniper, citrus peel, liquorice, orris, cassia, angelica root (whatever those last three are...), vanilla, caraway, fennel, coriander, cardamom and other delicate herbs and spices and that’s what I want to drink this summer.





More...