Bimini Gin

Biddeford, Maine

Brand Story

Founded in 2015 by a husband and wife team, Darren Case and Kristina Hansen, who returned to their home state of Maine to produce a modern, American style gin.

Darren and Kristina had both moved to New York to pursue marketing and jewelry making careers, respectively. As self-proclaimed cocktail nerds, they became interested in learning about different craft spirits, ultimately leading to the inspiration to start their own gin distillery, which initially began by macerating botanicals in mason jars in their New York apartment.

Kristina and Darren moved back to their home state of Maine and opened their distillery in 2015 in a former textile mill in the City of Biddeford.

The inspiration behind the name Bimini has dual meaning.

First, Darren and Kristina were inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s novel, Islands in the Stream. This book is set on the island of Bimini in the Bahamas, which is the country’s closest island to the United States. The main character spends the majority of the book drinking gin with coconut water, lime juice, and angostura bitters while relaxing in the shade on his boat. This cocktail has been affectionately named “The Bimini Special” and is the go-to house cocktail at the Round Turn Distilling bar.

Second, a Bimini top is an open-front canvas top for the cockpit of a boat. Darren and Kristina grew up around boats and the ocean life holds great memories for them.

The Botanicals

The botanicals that make up Bimini Gin were inspired by the short, yet delicious Maine summers where ‘Mainers’ mostly drink gin and tonics or session IPA’s. Darren and Kristina pulled from those flavor profiles to create the recipe that became Bimini Gin.

The final botanical bouquet includes juniper, coriander, orris root, chamomile, grapefruit, Mt. Hood hops and malted barley. Prior to release, there was a research & development stage during which Kristina and Darren distilled each of the botanicals separately to find their preferred flavors and volatility levels. That research led them to separate distillation into two groups of botanicals based on similarly optimal volatility levels to help avoid stripping oil content from any of the botanicals.

Adds a warm spice note along with light lemon notes. This is a typical botanical in gin production.
Using whole-flower German organic chamomile adds both a honey note and an herbaceous note.
Orris Root is part of the iris family and is used mainly for binding purposes. It is a botanical found in most gins, and also used in most perfumes.
Bulgarian juniper oils are more concentrated due to the fact that they are smaller berries, which helps with texture and viscosity in the final distillate.
An aromatic hop bred from the German Hallertau varietal chosen for equal parts flavoring, bittering and aromatics. It adds a slight tingling sensation to the finish.
Using Dingemans Aromatic Malt, which is lightly roasted, adds a light grain sweetness reminiscent of a genever, and rounds out the body of the distillate for a mouthfeel that hugs the palate.
Using dried grapefruit peel, as opposed to whole grapefruit or undried peel, adds oils instead of moisture. This adds bright citrus notes and harmonizes with the citrus and bitter notes from the hops and the coriander.

Production Notes: Darren and Kristina use traditional botanicals as a starting point and build their unique botanicals around them to help create a lifted and bright distillate. Juniper, coriander and orris root help frame the dynamic flavors built around aromatic barley malt, Mt. Hood hops, chamomile, and grapefruit peel. The hops and grapefruit add a fresh herbal citrus quality while the coriander adds a peppery spice. The chamomile and malted barley allow a tinge of honey to shine through. The chamomile allows Bimini to infuse nicely with teas of all sorts. Cocktails that add honey, lemon myrtle, lemon grass, lavender, licorice root and vanilla all bring out the herbal notes in the chamomile. The warm coriander and chamomile notes play well in not only classic cocktails, but pair nicely with tropical ingredients such as coconut, lime, papaya and guava used in tiki style drinks. The citrus plays nicely with shaken cocktails and the grapefruit peel pairs especially nicely with any aperitivo.

Production Process

Kristina and Darren never set out to make and bottle vodka, and therefore, the decision was made to buy their base spirit for consistency and quality purposes. They chose a 100% non-GMO corn distillate made from corn grown in Illinois and distilled in Missouri. It is distilled four times and delivered at 190 proof.

Throughout the entire production of Bimini Gin, Darren and Kristina take steps to ensure the preservation of all the oils in each botanical. They are not “turning and burning” gin, and instead allow for a ‘slow and low distillation.’ Each of the two distillation groups per batch takes around 17 hours and produces about a 50-60 gallon distillate (around 117 gallons in total). The distillate comes off the still around 85-90% ABV.

They do not chill filter any of their gins to ensure maximum oil content. By not charcoal filtering, they are not stripping any of the zest and oils from the botanicals, which not only creates extreme textures on the distillate, but also allows each botanical to shine through. A louche effect will occur when liquid or ice is added to the spirit. This louche is seen because all the oils coagulate, and a milky appearance becomes present.

Kristina and Darren take these whole, dried botanicals and mill them on site by hand using a rolling mill powered by a drill.
The milled botanicals are then directly macerated in the 55% ABV base distillate (non GMO corn) for around 2-4 days, depending on the botanical.
The still used to produce Bimini Gin was made locally in Etna, Maine, by Trident Stills. It is a 300 gallon, packed column still with dephlegmator (also known as secondary reflux condenser). The column still is packed with copper mesh, which increases the surface area and offers a higher degree of condensation. This helps separate out volatile compounds and absorbs more sulfur. The dephlegmator acts as a secondary condenser at the top of the column. This allows for a higher degree of reflux by recondensing vapor in cycles, thereby breaking volatile compounds down into their component parts, so only specific volatilities are collected in final distillate.
Immediately after distillation, Kristina and Darren blend the two groups and proof the blend with water from the Saco River, an offshoot of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, which they have charcoal filtered to remove chlorine. The blended distillate then rests for around 6 weeks in stainless steel tanks.
Finally, the gin is filtered for clarity at room temperature before Darren and Kristina hand fill, hand label and hand cap their bottles.

Production Notes: Their packed column still with the dephlegmator helps them control the vapor temperature more closely. The more times alcohol is vaporized, the more refined your spirit will be. By controlling the vapor temperature more closely, Darren and Kristina are able to minimize the juniper “pine tree” notes. This in turn creates a brighter, more fruit-forward juniper flavor. The column still is packed with copper mesh and this serves two purposes: it absorbs sulfur compounds which eliminates off flavors coming through and allows for a massive amount of surface area for the alcohol and botanical oils to condense, leaving the finished distillate with a creamy consistency.

With the dephlegmator, Darren and Kristina are able to influence the character of the finished distillate to higher degrees. With the piney juniper notes softened, the honey notes from the chamomile and citrus notes from the coriander, grapefruit peel and Mt. Hood hops take center stage. This makes Bimini a much more approachable gin and gives a wider array of flavors to work with when developing cocktails.

The high oil content creates a silky viscosity, which allows for very juicy and velvety spirit-forward cocktails which in turn give your palate a nice hug.

Original Gin

The original gin follows the production process as laid out above, while three line extensions each take that original gin another step to create a diverse yet well aligned range.

Distillery: Round Turn Distilling
Location: Biddeford, Maine
Founded: 2015
Still: 300 gallon packed column still with dephlegmator
Still Origin: Trident Stills from Etna, Maine
Base Spirit: Non-GMO Corn
Botanicals: Juniper, Coriander, Grapefruit Peel, Mt. Hood Hops, Aromatic Barely, Chamomile, Orris Root
Water: Saco River, origins from the White Mountains of New Hampshire
Milling: Hand milled using drill
Maceration: 2-4 days
Distillation: 17 hours
Resting Period: 6 weeks, stainless steel tanks
Proofing: Saco River, origins from the White Mountains of New Hampshire
Filtration: Room temperature
ABV: 47%

Coconut Gin

The original gin put through a large scale fat-washing

Darren and Kristina take the Bimini Original gin and add organic, extra virgin, fair trade certified coconut oil (sourced from the Philippines ). The oil is heated to liquid form and infused in the gin for about a week. They then use a copper coil chiller to cool the gin just until the coconut oil solidifies again (around 70 degrees.). This allows them to strain it out, basically ‘rack’ (pump) the gin out from under the coconut solids, and run it through their normal filtration that the OG gin gets, just to remove any excess bits. So the botanical oils aren’t disturbed since its the same micron level as normal. The end result is a little more oily than the original gin because the coconut technically raises the oil content. Since they don’t use any extracts or other flavoring the coconut becomes sort of the 8th botanical. It’s a dry, natural flavor that’s in line with the other botanicals.

Why Fat-washing?

Fat–washing is all about extreme texture. Coconut creates a subtle harmony of flavor and can feel like an 8th botanical. True to coconut texture, we get tons of viscosity and a chewiness on the palate, almost as if you are eating coconut meat. Things that make coconut sing: pear, basil, lemongrass, guava, mint (think mojito!), vanilla, passion fruit, pineapple...blood orange (think Pimms Cup). Herbaceous flavors make the coconut pop along with anything effervescence. Remember ‘fat loves bubbles’.

Barrel Reserve Gin No. 1

The original gin aged in a 3 barrel series

When deciding to make a barrel gin, Kristina and Darren didn’t want to make a “gin-skey,” meaning they didn’t want to make a gin-flavored whiskey. While at the River Drive Cooperage, located about an hour from the distillery, they decided twice used barrels would be stripped more of their vanilla tannins and they could pick barrels that would emphasize their botanicals.

They chose 3 different, twice-used, American Oak barrels:

Barrel 1: 1st housed bourbon, then apple brandy
Barrel 2: 1st housed bourbon, then Caribbean rum
Barrel 3: 1st housed bourbon, then sea salt

The distillate is put into the barrels at full distillation strength, ~90% ABV, and spends around 3 months in each respective barrel.

Salt, Meet Fruit

Bimini barrel gin pairs effortlessly with tropical flavors, especially fruit. The pinch of salt from the Bimini barrel brings out the natural fruit flavors, drawing out their sweetness and suppressing the bitter and acidic tones. Fruits like papaya, honeydew, watermelon, coconut, guava and pineapple marinate nicely with Bimini Barrel Aged. When using Bimini Barrel Aged in brambles and cobblers along with “tiki” inspired drinks, the ingredients become juicier as the salt absorbs and sops up all the flavors in turn creating bright, balanced cocktails.

Production Notes: Darren and Kristina make deliberate decisions during the entire production of Bimini Gin in order to maintain the oils, flavors and quality of the botanical bouquet. The twice used barrels were chosen to emphasize and enhance the botanicals rather than overshadow them in the heavy oak and char notes of the barrels. The citrus of the hops and grapefruit are intensified with the salinity of the bourbon salt barrel. The juniper mingles with the tree notes from the apple brandy and the Caribbean rum ginger notes accentuate the spice of the coriander.

When tasting Bimini Barrel Aged for the first time, it is great to taste alongside the Original Gin, even if it is a revisit, because it helps show what the base is for the barrel aged. They accent each other and often one may taste something he/she missed before. As an addition to acting as a general flavor amplifier, salt has the unique ability to enhance sweetness and block bitterness.

The slight addition of the sea salt helps cut the fatty butterscotch notes and acidic tannins in the barrels leftover from the bourbon. When using Bimini Barrel aged in cocktails, we see the salt as the “hand that throws the confetti.” It creates structure in a Negroni as it amplifies the sweet vermouth while toning down the bitter notes in the aperitivo.

Overproof Gin

A Navy Strength version of the original

Why 111 Proof?

Kristina and Darren sought out to make a Navy Strength Gin but wanted to make sure they didn't burn out any of the oils or flavors of the botanicals. They decided to start tasting off the still in 2 proof increments, beginning at 100 all the way to 120 (100, 102, 104, etc). They discovered anything after 112 wasn't tasting right and 110 / 112 was where the botanicals really shined through. With that in mind, they went with the middle of the two: 111.

The Louche Effect

Oils dissolve in alcohol, but they separate in water. When Bimini Original is diluted, the botanical oils begin to fall out of solution making the gin appear cloudy. Bimini Original is, therefore, filtered at room temperature because Darren and Kristina didn’t think the world was ready to buy a bottle of cloudy gin. They filter out just enough oil to keep it clear a room temperature, but still maintaining enough oils to preserve texture and flavor, and to create a louche effect when diluted with liquid or ice. At 111 proof, Bimini Overproof stays crystal clear at room temperature with no filtration necessary. This ensures every drop of flavor they have extracted from the botanicals goes into the bottle and therefore, the flavor in the overproof is more concentrated compared to the Original.

The Louche Effect is the resulting oil-in-water emulsion that occurs when water is added to certain spirits, particularly those flavored with anise, resulting in a milky appearance.

Production Notes: The higher proof magnifies the botanical bouquet. We see deeper tones of cardamom, citrus, baking spice and honey notes along with an intense, rich mouth feel. The lack of any filtration with the overproof creates a different balance of flavor. The juniper is more robust, and the hops are more vivid. The end result is silky and creamy martinis.