Home Made Gin

 It’s going to be hot for the next few days so I took it upon myself to help out the local squirrels and birds. I filled up the Turtle Pond in the back yard.

I had a little trouble getting into the back to turn on the fountain so I further decided it would be a good time to prune the bush a bit.

So I broke out the wheel barrow and the nippers and started trimming the bush. At one point, I noticed the thick piney smell of the bush as I clipped away the excess branches. It occurred to me that it kind of smelled like gin.

A couple of weeks ago, I got into a discussion with a woman at church named Sue. She had read about making gin with juniper berries. She was talking more about an infused gin where you use a neutral alcohol (vodka) and soak it with juniper berries, lime and lemon peels, and other aromatics and botanicals.

When I got home from church, I googled juniper berries and where I could get some.

That was two weeks ago.

So I’m clipping away and noticing the sweet smell of gin when it suddenly occurred to me, is this a juniper bush?

I returned to the Google machine to find out what a juniper bush looks like. 

It looks like the one next to the turtle pond…and it’s loaded with berries.

So I went out for about half an hour and picked berries.

This is what I got. I have no idea if these are ripe although I suspect they aren’t. But they have a definite gin flavor to them. So I’m going to soak these in a jar of Everclear along with some lime and a sprig from the bush. I’ll check it in a couple of days and go from there.