Empress 1908 gin is a Canadian Gin that has been infused with Butterfly Pea Flower to give it a blue hue. The cool thing about Butterfly Pea Flower infusions is that their color is sensitive to pH. In other words, if you increase the acidity of the liquid it will turn from dark blue to a lovely purple. And if you reduce the acidity of the liquid it will turn back to blue. It makes a lovely cup of tea. And I do mean lovely, the colors are beautiful.
And so when Empress 1908 gin, a gin infused with Butterfly Pea Flower, was brought to my attention I was very interested. A few years back, I spent an entire spring playing with infusing herbs, spices, fruit, flowers, and tea in alcohol. But I never ran across Butterfly Pea Flower in my experimentation. So, of course, the first thing I did was to look at their website. And since it is gin, I looked at the cocktail section. I found the following cocktail recipe for the Bees Knees.
Isn’t that pretty? So of course, after I did the tasting notes, I decided to make that cocktail. I’m a sucker for pretty. Probably has something to do with my artistic streak. But speaking of tasting notes.
Empress 1908 Gin
Purchase info: $4.99 for a 50 mL bottle at the Party Source, Bellevue, KY
Price per Drink (50 mL): $4.99
Details: Botanicals on Website are: tea, juniper, rose, coriander seed, grapefruit peel, ginger root, cinnamon bark, and butterfly pea blossom. 42.5% ABV.
Nose: Juniper, ginger
Month: Delicately flavored. Think floral vodka. Not much juniper. Ginger is the dominant note.
Finish: Not much of one to speak of.
Thoughts: Kinda meh. It's a pretty mediocre gin with a great idea behind it. You don't buy this one to sip, this is purchased to make pretty drinks. So let's make that pretty drink above.
Ummmm…I’m thinking that there might have been something going on with their website photography. the drink I made has the slightest purple tint. But it isn’t vibrant or really even purple if I’m being honest.
Ok, so the one reason you might want to buy this gin has fallen flat. I guess I won’t be spending the money on it in the future when I want to wow people with a cool science trick. But I did promise my wife pretty cocktails tonight so let's make our own, shall we?
As I mentioned above, I’ve known about Butterfly Pea Flower Tea for a while now. In fact, I’ve had some in the house for a little over a year. It’s a cool thing to bring out and wow the nieces and nephews with. And it tastes pretty good too. The one I buy is blue-tee from Wild Hibiscus. I buy it because they are individually sealed and I don’t use it very often.
After that it is time to infuse the gin. Personally, one of my favorites is Beefeater…well, it’s my favorite that I would want to use in an experiment like this. I need about a cup and a half or so and I don’t want to use a more expensive and harder to replace craft-gin, like Castle & Key, for it. I pour the gin in a mason jar and then drop in the teabag. I’m not really worried about the flavor of the tea coming though. Gin already has a lot of botanicals and the butterfly pea flower tea is pretty delicately flavored. After about 5-10 minutes, I get the level of color I’m looking for.
And so, for science, I went ahead and made the same cocktail as above. I think my version turned out a little better. A pretty cocktail for my pretty lady.
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