Every month, Craft Gin Club shines a light on a new style of gin or key cocktail ingredient and this month we are exploring one of the biggest trends in the gin industry: pink gins! And if you love pink gin, be sure to join us at our Pink Gins G&T Tasting Virtual Event in April.
In this fabulous feature, you can find everything you need to know about this wildly fashionable style of gin, including a shortlist of our best craft pink gins and three of our favourite pink gin cocktails for you to try. But first, let’s take a look at what a pink gin actually is…
What are pink gins?
Pink Gin originated as a cocktail, but in recent history has come to mean a category of gins that are pink in colour.
How are pink gins made?
Because pink gin is not a legally defined category in the same way as London Dry Gin, there is a lot more creative freedom when it comes to making it. However, to be classed as a gin, fruit-flavoured gins (and ultimately pink gins) still need to be at least 37.5% ABV and to taste primarily of juniper.
Most often, pink gins are traditionally distilled gins that have an ingredient that gives off a pink hue added post-distillation. For example, pink gins may be infused with rhubarb, rose, raspberry, redcurrant, cherry, strawberry, grapes or spices. Sometimes sweeteners and colouring are also added to pink gins post-distillation, although that often isn’t the case with high-end craft pink gins, which can be as elegant and complex as their non-pink counterparts.
History of pink gin
People have been enjoying the Pink Gin cocktail since it was invented amongst the British Navy as a cure for seasickness back in the 1800s. However, pink gin as a category of spirit didn’t become popular until the 21st century. Distillers had been making pink gins by adding fruits such as strawberries to gin since at least the 17th century, but they weren’t widely available until the 2010s. According to industry specialist David T. Smith, there were fewer than five pink gins on the market in 2013. Today, there are hundreds available, varying from the mass-produced to craft gins that represent the pinnacle of quality.
What are the best pink gins? Here are three of our favourites!
For the pink gin purist… Brass Lion Pahit Pink Gin takes its inspiration from the classic cocktail Pink Gin, which combines gin with bitters. The Brass Lion Distillery (the team that also make Craft Gin Club’s August 2021 Gin of the Month, Brass Lion Singapore Dry Gin) also uses ingredients from traditional Chinese medicine shops as a nod to the fact that the Pink Gin cocktail was originally thought to be a cure for seasickness.
“Historically, the British brought Pink Gin to Singapore. Local bartenders started calling it Gin Pahit, because pahit means ‘bitter’ in Malay. With this gin, we wanted to create Gin Pahit in our own way. Instead of using a Plymouth gin, for example, we used Brass Lion Singapore Dry Gin as our base. We also made our own Singaporean bitters using ingredients we found in local traditional medicine shops, including red dates, goji berries, star anise, cinnamon, cloves and gentian roots.”
For the sophisticated palate…To make Victory Pink Gin, the maverick husband-and-wife team Max and Máire Chater take their multi-award-winning Victory Cold Distilled Gin and add verjus, which makes their spirit the delicate blush colour of a rosé. The secret weapon of Michelin-starred chefs and top mixologists, verjus is the pressed juice of unripened grapes. In terms of flavour, it has a sophisticated acidity undercut by natural sweetness. Victory Pink Gin has notes of green plum, spring cherry, cranberry and, of course, juniper.
For fans of fruit-forward gins…1689 Queen Mary Pink Gin was inspired by not one but two historic recipes. First, the distillers use a 320-year-old recipe to make Gin 1689, which was selected by Craft Gin Club as the 2019 October Gin of the Month. Then they take inspiration from a 17th-century recipe that called for gin to be drunk with crushed strawberries and raspberries. The result is a beautiful juniper-forward, strawberry and raspberry gin.
Three of the best pink gin cocktail recipes:
Pink Gin Martini
60ml pink gin
30ml dry vermouth
Lemon peel or lemon twist, to garnish
Add your pink gin and vermouth to a mixing glass and stir well until chilled. Strain into a chilled martini or coupe glass and garnish to serve.
Pink Gin & Ginger Beer
50ml Brass Lion Pahit Pink Gin
200ml ginger beer
Twist of rhubarb and slice of orange, to garnish
Combine your ingredients in a copa glass with plenty of ice as you would with a pink gin spritz, then garnish to serve.
Floradora
50ml pink gin
25ml lime juice
25ml raspberry liqueur
Ginger ale, to top up
Sprig of mint, to garnish
Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and add the gin, lime juice and raspberry liqueur. Shake to combine, then strain into a rocks glass with ice. Top up with ginger ale, garnish and enjoy.
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