The Singaporean making gin with ingredients from your neighbourhood market
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The Singaporean making gin with ingredients from your neighbourhood market
Talk about "local spirit". Ashwin Sekaran's Singapore Distillery boasts gin flavours made with pandan, different types of lime – and even ones that are inspired past the Singapore Sling and bandung.
The different local gin flavours at Singapore Distillery (Photograph: Singapore Distillery)
How would yous define a Singapore-made gin? For new-kid-on-the-block micro-distiller Ashwin Sekaran, it's all nigh "showcasing the astonishing Asian herbs and spices that tin can exist hands found here".
"(With) Singapore historically being a trading hub, (it) has immune us to use all sorts of ingredients like spices from Bharat, local herbs, Asian fruits, and yes, western botanicals in a well-balanced fashion," the 27-year-old Singaporean told CNA Lifestyle.
Which is why Sekaran'southward Singapore Distillery – the youngest actor in the local distillery game, having just started in 2020, has whipped upward a whopping eight different gins with a local bear upon.
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These boast flavours such as Coconut Pandan (made with creamy coconut and pandan leaves), Stolen Roses (a rose blend inspired by the bandung drink) and the self-explanatory Singapore Sling version (distilled with all the ingredients ordinarily used to make the famous cocktail, such as fresh pineapples, oranges, cherries and angelica root).
And the ingredients that go into these creations? They're all to exist plant in your friendly neighbourhood markets. Sekaran and his team regularly go to those in Geylang Serai, Bishan and Bedok, as well as Pasir Panjang Wholesale Middle, to source limes, spices, oranges, pandan, coconuts, pineapples and more.
Talk about fully embracing the local spirit.
"We wanted to get super fresh ingredients to make our gin," shared Sekaran, who serves as Singapore Distillery's caput distiller. "And the best fashion to get them was by going directly to local markets and getting them directly from the supplier."
And in true Singaporean kampung spirit, the aunties and uncles at the wet markets have become friends – even throwing in a "lobang" (favour) or two.
"We would go on going and ordering kilos and kilos of spices, herbs, coconut mankind, and fruits from the diverse vendors," Sekaran said, recalling the early on days of his business.
"After a while, they got friendly with us and would tell the states to contact them and place orders beforehand so they can keep the freshest ingredients for us to collect."
To call back this all started during a family holiday in London in 2017.
"I had just gotten into drinking gin but hadn't had any exposure to craft gin yet," he shared. "It was only when I ordered a gin and tonic at a London pub and was given a craft gin carte du jour did I find out about craft distilleries and craft gin."
So, in lieu of the usual holiday sightseeing pitstops, Sekaran attended a arts and crafts distilling expo instead. That same night, he went on a distillery tour where the caput distiller explained that it was very important for them to use expensive and hard-to-detect botanicals like cardamom, cinnamon, fresh limes, and cloves.
"And I thought to myself, all of those ingredients are very commonly used hither in Singapore!" he recalled. "That's when I got the idea to start a distillery here in Singapore and brand gins using local botanicals only too using quality imported juniper berries and other necessary western botanicals to actually enhance the flavour of the gin."
After making sure he learned "how to brand gin properly" with stints at the Institute of Brewing & Distilling in London, Brewlab in Sunderland and the University of Adelaide in Australia, Sekaran officially opened Singapore Distillery's doors in September 2020, right smack in the middle of the global pandemic.
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The distillery is located in a flatted factory in Ang Mo Kio, with a 500-litre, custom-built copper still that churns out almost 500 bottles of gin a day.
Sekaran is especially proud of the broad range of gins they produce – from the 13 spices and herbs Merlion to the Lime Garden, which is fabricated from limes normally used locally: Limau nipis, limau purut, limau purut leaves and calamansi.
"Nosotros've got the widest range of any Singaporean distillery and I think, one of the widest ranges of gins in the world from a unmarried distillery," he said.
What still astounds Sekaran to this 24-hour interval is that the proper noun – Singapore Distillery – hadn't even been snapped upwards later all these years.
"We thought nosotros'd just try our luck. It simply seems the most natural name to use for a local distillery and yet it was still available," he gleefully recalled. "So we grabbed it!"
Singapore Distillery debuted with vi different gins and has since added two new flavours to its bill of fare: The Orange Grove (filled with kumquats and tangerines) and Ichigo Cameron (the first and just gin made with Japanese strawberries grown fresh in Cameron Highlands from Japanese parental seeds).
At present that Singapore Distillery is a robust almost one-year-old with a staff forcefulness of half-dozen, what is Sekaran's biggest takeaway almost making information technology as a homegrown distillery in a competitive market place?
"You have to piece of work very hard to keep the gin balanced. I learned this when I was getting my distilling qualification from the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in London. A good gin has got to exist a balance of juniper and the other botanicals," he shared.
"This is fifty-fifty more important when we're using the bold and vivid flavours of Asian fruits, herbs, and spices. You can't but chuck everything you desire to utilize inside a gin and expect information technology to be skillful. That will just result in a lot of ambivalent flavours."
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/singaporean-making-gin-ingredients-your-neighbourhood-market-249776
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