homemade gin kit -

by Emily

ES-Approved Holiday Gift Guide for Food Lovers

Still looking for that perfect gift for the epicurean in your life? Try one of our suggestions! Thanks to the internet, there’s no shortage of cookbooks and kitchen goods out there, but we’ve cut through the boring stuff and picked out a handful of ideas that are sure to please. Stick one of these under your tree and treat yourself to a drink – holiday shopping is hard work!

From Scratch: Inside the Food Network
We love some Food Network as much as the rest of the country, but we’re also suckers for a good celeb chef snark sesh, and this new book from Allen Salkin looks like it will provide plenty of ammo.

HomeMade Gin Kit Holiday Blend Christmas Refill
I reviewed the HomeMade Gin Kit last holiday season (and gave it two thumbs up, I think it’s a super fun project and makes a great gift for any cocktail lover). Now they’ve released a special holiday edition. According to Gin Kit co-founder Joe Maiellano, “We’ve toned down the citrus and summery flavors in the original gin infusion blend and laced the new one with cinnamon, clove, ginger, and rosemary. We came up with a cocktail recipe for the new gin using cranberry juice, orange liqueur, and a rosemary sprig that testers say looks and tastes like Christmas in a glass!” The refill is only $10, so it makes a nice stocking stuffer for anyone you got the original kit for last year.

Magical Unicorn Salt
Truth time: part of the reason we picked this one is because of its majestic name. Besides that, though, this stuff sounds great: a mix of pure ocean salt, smoked paprika, garlic, rosemary, and celery seed. The seasoning possibilities are endless! The manufacturer, Beautiful Briny Sea, doesn’t have a full online store, but you can check out their current offerings and contact info on their Facebook page, and right now, just in time for gift-giving, Magical Unicorn Salt is selling on Fab.

Resolving to Make My Own Gin

Everything is DIY these days. People brew their own beer. Urban farmers with backyard chicken coops and beehives are multiplying exponentially…or at least, here in Austin they are. It was only a matter of time before Americans took certain matters into their own hands and started distilling their own homemade liquors as well.

Luckily for us agriculturally-challenged folks, the dudes at the Homemade Gin Kit have our backs. No Boardwalk Empire bathtub swill for us in 2013! Instead, you can send away for a big box packed with (almost) everything you need to create your very own bottle of gin. For $40 plus tax and shipping, they’ll send you juniper berries, a mix of botanicals, spices, and flowers, two glass swing top liquor bottles, a double mesh fine strainer, a funnel, and detailed instructions. All you need to have is your own bottle of mid-grade vodka, and a little bit of patience.

I was fortunate enough to score a sample of the Gin Kit before it was released to the public this holiday season, and I’ll be honest: while the idea of making my own booze was undeniably appealing, I was a liiiiiittle bit skeptical. Could I really make gin just by throwing some dried herbs into a bottle of vodka? Also, I’m pretty picky about gin quality (unlike boxed wine or well vodka, I actually have standards when it comes to gin, because the cheap stuff makes me nauseous)—would this creation even be up to my standards?

Well, if anyone was up for the challenge of finding out, it was THIS GIRL.

Here’s what came out of my kit:

Here you can see all the supplies I listed above (plus my own bottle of Vikingfjord Vodka, which is pretty good, and a steal at $10ish!) The equipment is all high-quality stuff—-the glass bottles are really nice and sturdy, and the strainer and funnel are solid as well. I will definitely add these to permanent rotation in my kitchen tool collection.

Anyway, the process is pretty simple. You add some of the juniper to the vodka bottle, wait a day-ish, add the rest of the botanicals, wait longer, than strain out all the crud and funnel the remaining liquid into the glass bottles. Ta-da, gin! The process of making the gin itself took about a weekend (as in, spending 5-10 minutes on each step, every other part was just waiting) and it was fun and exciting. I guess the excitement factor depends on how thrilled you get about booze, but we all know how I feel about that.

Here’s me fulfilling my destiny with the last part of the process, funneling the gin into its final home: