Doghouse Distillery Renegade Gin (70cl), Award-Winning Battersea London Gin 42% ABV, a contemporary, refreshingly herby Botanical Gin

Product Information

A handful of the botanicals (no doubt the hardier, more standard ones) are left to macerate overnight in the base vodka, then in the morning the rest of the ingredients are added in and the still is switched on. The distillation run is a long, slow eight hours, producing somewhere between 2,500 and 3,500 bottles (once cut down to bottling strength of 42%) at a time. Renegade Gin to taste…

Also within the range is their Baller Vodka which recently won “Best Spirit” in Great Britain in the 2019 Great British Food Awards. This tipple is London’s only vodka made fully from scratch using 100% English wheat. Full of attitude, this baller is totally unfiltered and loaded with character. At 32 litres and standing at 73cm tall, the ‘Jawbox Giant’s Edition’ bottle is an oversized version of the brand’s Export Strength gin with an ABV of 47%. East London-based soft drinks brand Square Root is shaking up the soda category with the arrival of its lemonade, ginger beer, cola and rhubarb soda in 250ml cans. We are focused now on releasing an Aperitivo in the first half of this year. As far as gin goes, though, we have produced and will release in the coming months our first batch Damson Gin, as part of our Sidewayz brand, and also the second batch of our Sidewayz Sloe Gin.

The Doghouse Range

While we remain committed to bottling our drinks, we foresee cans becoming a key part of our offering this summer and beyond.” With tonic, the waxed leaf flush is even brighter, with the dilution of the spirit hushing the spice and allowing the foliage to roam free. It’s incredibly green and delightfully refreshing, a G&T for a hot summer day, for sure.

Production begins in the field. Saunders buys in wheat from an English maltster, which he mills, mashes and brews into a high sugar wort. Then he adds yeast and ferments into around a 10% wheat beer. This is then pot distilled up to a 30% low wine before being put through Doghouse Distillery’s rectification column where it transfers into a high purity vodka. Actually it was from enjoying micro brewed beer and learning the brewing process. I started to wonder how hard spirits would be to make… and the rest is history! As a distiller, what are you most proud about having done at Doghouse so far?A distillery that is revolutionary in epic proportions; Doghouse, is the only operation in London (and one of only a handful in the whole of UK), to pioneer the ‘grain-to-bottle’ approach in crafting their liquors. Where most distilleries buy in a 96% neutral grain alcohol to provide the base for the spirits they make, Doghouse holds the rare distinction of having their own in-house base spirit; completely made from scratch. Through this added effort, they have been able to achieve complete control of uniqueness and quality. So to England from Australia via America Saunders journeyed, heading to London not just because it is the land of gin, but because he’s felt the magnetic pull of the city ever since he pulled a five-year stint in the early Noughties. Plus, he adds, “it’s the best city in the world, right?” In this speedy 60 second interview, we caught up with him to find out just how fast things are moving for the team and how his unique, anti-hero style brand is captivating the attention of many, especially ourselves! Gin Foundry: You have a full year under your belt now. Congrats! What’s it been like living in the eye of the storm? Once you have done your budget and timeline, triple it! Do you feel like people are starting to really understand the grain to glass ethos you guys have? When it burst onto the scene in late 2017, Renegade Gin had our attention instantly. A grain to glass gin made in central London seemed if not impossible, highly unlikely, so we hot footed it down to the distillery to see what was going on. We were astonished by the level of craft co-founder Braden Saunders was working towards, and we’ve been trailing his journey ever since.

We cast our MoM-branded spotlight on Citadelle Gin , an expression created at a Cognac house, that predates the craft gin boom. Its founder Alexandre Gabriel explains why he created a gin in the first place, the 18th-century recipe he based it on and his patented brand of gin distillation. So how to use Citadelle Gin? Gabriel has a few thoughts: “I love a G&T and with Citadelle it’s incredible, but my little sin is actually a Gin Reserve with just a glassful of dry Curaçao,” he says. “Not the blue stuff, we make an original curacao made with real orange. I also love a gin martini with a great vermouth like Dolin and of course I love a French 75”. My advice would be to explore and experiment. It’s what Alexandre Gabriel would do. The new cans are both innovative and fun, solving the problem and reflecting the quirky personality of our brand. Just don’t tell our marketing team I said that!”G&T without doubt - and a simple one with no fluff, where you can really taste the Renegade. Light on the garnish, we like a small sprig of rosemary or sage. We are pretty simple drinkers in the Doghouse. Renegade was made to be a perfect G&T. It does make an epic Negroni and Southside, though. Gin’s a competitive but inclusive community, so too is distilling. How have you found the craft distilling scene and who’s another distiller you admire? Jawbox Gin is set to unveil the world’s largest bottle of gin – equivalent to almost 46 standard bottles of gin – as the hospitality industry reopens for business. In the early days of Citadelle, Gabriel recalls a group of students proposing to do a business case on the brand. Naturally, Gabriel accepted, hoping their acumen would provide some insight. Their analysis? “There is no way this can work,” Gabriel says, laughing at his own expense. “This kept happening. I remember our importer in America looking at me like I must have gone mad. A French gin?! This decision was made purely out of passion and it was almost disastrous to our business. I have made many mistakes and I hope I am going to make less,” he says. “It looked like Citadelle wouldn’t work because it was out of time and it was financially painful. But, in the end, the two wrongs became a right. Now there is a new gin every week, right!?”