Substituting vodka for some of the gin helps a lot. It’s still not the best martini I’ve ever had, but it’s good enough that at least the gin won’t go to waste. I certainly wasn’t going to sip it straight.
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Out of curiosity, what gin is it that has the minty taste? Maybe we can research it a little and figure out why it tastes that way.
Big Bottom Northwest Style Gin, distilled in Hillsboro, Oregon. A similar local gin that I’ve tried is Ransom, which is closer to Hendricks in overall taste. From the Big Bottom website it seems they have more experience with whiskey.
This will shock and astound all of you, but some of the gins I see in the liquor stores here actually have color, like pale whiskey.
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Portland Dry Gin 33 from New Deal distillery in Portland is a pretty traditional juniper-based gin. They also have a gin (“No. 1”) that is more in line with the weird craft ones you don’t like, so make sure you are getting the right one.
I like Aviation too. It’s not really a traditional London Dry, but it’s more normal than Big Bottom or Ransom. It has noticeable juniper, but a few more aromatics come through as well. I think it falls between regular Bombay and Bombay Sapphire. It still makes a great martini.
Yup. New Deal Gin No. 1 is one of those. Weird stuff.
There are two ways to get color naturally into a craft gin (you could use caramel like whiskey or rum but that would be weird) one is barrel aging just like other brown spirits. There are a bunch of barrel aged gins coming to market, they obviously pick up the wood notes that can pair well with their botanicals but they also will get some of the previous spirit in the barrel. The other common way is cold maceration post-distillation these are called compounded gins. They can pick up all kinds of colors from the botanicals that are soaking in them. The weirdest one I’ve seen wasSilver Dolphin by Three Brother’s distilling. That stuff was a weird reddish brown.
As far as what makes a dry gin it is the lack of addition of sugar. It is typical to add 1-2% sugar to a gin to help with its mouthfeel and flavor. This doesn’t have to be added to the label in the US. THat being said there is no legal definition of “dry” so that lack of sugar may not always be true.
To get very local, Big Bottom is a strange distillery. I like most of their stuff (except the gin), but they are definitely going for a distinction to standard flavors in most of their offerings.
Has anyone else tried Jackrabbit Gin out of Utah? it’s flavored with sagebrush and Juniper.
It tastes like the deserts of western US.
Wild mint. There you go- I’d be willing to bet that’s what you taste.