News & Events

Winston Churchill once famously claimed that gin has saved more men’s lives and minds than all the doctors in Europe. Jo Brand, rather less famously stated that anything is good if it’s made of chocolate. Gin Is The New Chocolate – It was only a matter of time before someone put the two together.

Gin and chocolate tastings are popping up in every drink-loving city in the country, swiftly catching up with more commonplace wine and food pairings and even tipping whisky and cheese nights into the yesteryear. It’s a marriage not many people saw coming but when you think about it, chocolate and gin play very well together. Gin is known for displaying an almost infinite number of botanical additions and with the help of garnishes there’s no limit to what can be expressed. Chocolate as a food base can be rich or subtle, creamy or spicy, and is only as good as the favours imparted within. Who hasn’t jazzed up their evening hot chocolate with a helping of cinnamon or the lightest touch of chilli? And who hasn’t had a gin cocktail sweetened with gomme syrup (hello Tom Collins) or a gin Bloody Mary with a great dollop of Tabasco? If you haven’t, I suggest you go out immediately and get to it.

My gin & chocolate reflections

On the Gin Is The New Chocolate theme, in terms of Eden Mill, I’ve done some intensive research of my own. Our Hop Gin has a dry, floral character and the slight bitterness of the hops blends beautifully with the creaminess of a milk chocolate. Throw some honeycomb in the mix and you get a delicious reaction of alchemy; the honeycomb reverts to an almost raw state and the tacky mouth-feel creates a sumptuous texture.

The gentle rose and hibiscus flavours in our renowned Love Gin are suited to something delicate like white chocolate. The true beauty of white chocolate, and gin, lies in the botanics that can be added and a firm favourite of mine is a touch of jasmine. Picture a Scottish garden in summer and you’ll start to get an idea of this heavenly chocolate combination.

Whisky lovers have always been enticed by our Oak Gin as its maturation with bourbon staves makes it scream of caramel, toffee and honey notes. The slight sweetness of these flavours softens the juniper edge; an easy chocolate pairing would include caramel but to really get the taste buds tingling, add a sprinkling of sea salt.

Our London Dry Style Gin, the Original, has the added bonus of the sharp, citric burst of sea buckthorn. While it is the tartest of our expressions it is ironically best suited to a bitter dark chocolate as the astringent flavours are offset by the dark cocoa.

While gin and chocolate tastings are here to stay there will always be new pairings on the horizon. Perhaps we’ll be seeing gin and fried chicken by the end of the year? Maybe someone will crack open a gin and match it with foie gras.

For now though, I’ll enjoy my boozy chocolates.

Lara Williams

1st May 2017

Valentine’s Day: a time to show your loved one how much they truly mean to you. A day filled with love and appreciation; flowers and chocolates; affection and embrace. However, here at Eden Mill, it is a time of reflection. For us, Valentine’s Day is the celebration that Love Gin was inspired by.

It began life as a seasonal gin for Valentine’s Day in 2015. We had no idea the phenomenon we had on our hands. Because of its unusual combination of botanicals, its pale pink colour and unique bottle, we were unsure of how our creation would be perceived. Luckily, the incredibly unique flavours of our Love Gin stood their own ground and the popularity of this product with our customers was one we could have never have predicted.

Pink Love Gin

Love Gin has sweet and floral aromas as well as an indicting pale pink colour. All this come from the wide variety of botanical’s we use. In addition to the base gin ingredients, Love Gin incorporates eight exotic botanicals including red rose petals, marshmallow root, goji berries and whole hibiscus flowers. The romantically themed ingredients were at the core of our design to achieve a Gin that epitomised this sentimental occasion.

Two years on we are still continuously overwhelmed at how popular Love Gin has become whether on Valentine’s Day or not. It has outsold our other Gins three to one cementing its position in our core offering.

A Global Following

Love Gin has gained a global following from its humble origins in St. Andrews. We were amazed when it was graciously accepted by Glasgow and Edinburgh’s bartending scene. It has broken into the London Cocktail Scene, appeared in bottle shops across the USA and even has its own mural in Soho, Hong Kong.

So as you can see, for us Valentine’s Day is a celebration of Love in more ways than one. Join us and raise a glass to this spectacular Gin as we continue to share our passion.

Telling the Eden Mill story to thousands of visitors throughout the year, the Eden Mill tour guides’ days are powered by interactions with people. On any day, we can welcome visitors from as far afield as Japan, Australia, Canada, USA, or Motherwell. All want to learn more about our gin, whisky and beer and to soak in the passion that goes into crafting them.

The Eden Mill story… A day in the life

Each day begins with a quick walk around the brewery and distillery. Mainly to find out what the distillers and brewers have planned that day; but also to remind them to start our “tidy hours” for the many guests that will soon be coming through. We also try and do this immediately before each tour, because in a moment the brewery floor can become crowded with casks ready for filling. When the brewers and distillers are absorbed in their work, it can be easy to lose track of time. We don’t want visitors to be wandering through and seeing an area that’s not tidy. We’re pretty sure that if it weren’t for their coffees going cold, they would never leave the brew-floor or still room!

Once we’re up to speed on the goings-on and the gossip in the brewery and distillery, we begin setting up the shop and tasting area for the day’s visitors. This can involve everything from cleaning glasses and cutting up garnishes, ushering out any stragglers from the day before who perhaps imbibed a little too much and have spent the night sleeping it off in our tasting room (only kidding…). Next, we take a look at that day’s tour schedules to action any special requirements for the tours and give us time to prepare (both mentally and physically) for any hen-parties and stag-dos that may be coming our way later in the day. Telling the Eden Mill story is part of our culture and we love it.

Such a variety of visitors

Sometimes within a single day, sometimes even on a single tour, groups can be made up of a wide variety of folk. Individuals with specific interests in either gin, beer or whisky. Couples looking for a delightfully different way to spend an hour or two whilst on holiday. Large groups of students from nearby Universities looking for more in-depth information about the chemical processes involved in making the alcoholic beverages that are so close to their hearts. Our aim is to structure each tour so as to give everyone a great experience, whether they are looking for a good pint, a refreshing gin, a lovingly crafted dram, a wholehearted laugh, or some informative bits of trivia.

Always happy to help…

Guests often comment on the strong community spirit that flows through the brewery. None of our departments are guilty of “keeping themselves to themselves”. It’s a regular occurrence to find one of the brewers behind the bar in the tasting area, offering out samples of a new creation or a ‘work in progress’ to anyone that happens to be in the vicinity (be it staff, customers or customers’ dogs). This community spirit is also noticeable on a walk around the brewery. No-one is too busy to answer any questions, from the simple “How’s your day going?” to the more pressing “Is that dog drunk?”.

At the end of the day we will consider ourselves successful based on the responses we received from our visitors throughout the day. The smiles, the laughs, the marriage proposals…

Some of these things happened. Some I (slightly) exaggerated. The best way to find out which is to visit. We can’t wait to welcome you but if you can’t come to a tour, at least you can still buy your gin and beer online.

John Bruin
Retail Assistant (Tour Guide)
St Andrews

Distilling & Crafting

Today we distilled 500 Litres of Original Gin and brewed 1600 litres of Shipwreck IPA. One by one we bottled 400 bottles of our new Golf Gin and 550 bottles of Seggie Chilli Ginger Porter beer. We applied 600 labels… mostly to the gin bottles, (sometimes to each other), and stacked numerous tons of them to pallets bound for the United States. We repaired a handful of whisky casks and then proceeded to play a giant game of Tetris to get them fitting nicely in the cold store.

We accidently soaked ourselves; twice with water and once in beer. We took thousands of precise measurements and temperature readings, and then took a bit of a punt as to how much fresh red pepper would give chilli gin a warming red hue.

We tasted a lot

We tasted the trickling gin running from the condenser; we tasted sweet malty wort from the brew; the hop infusion for a new batch of hop gin; the difference between juniper berries before and after distillation; the progress of each beer in the fermentation tanks; we tasted a year old experiment of Belgian style sour beer in old bourbon casks; and we also tasted a selection of the Head Distillers collection of weird and wonderful teas.

We listened and admired

We listened out for the hisses and creaks of the steam pipes and the reversing warning of the tireless fork lift. We also listened to ACDC, Nina Simone and Muse. We created a Blue Peter-esque system to measure the water in a giant black storage tank using PVC piping, two bottles, fishing line, a fishing rod, and 20 minutes of heated debate, small scale mock up and belly aching laughter.

We admired our resident Oystercatcher as he chirped greetings to the multinational tour groups from atop his slate perch on the old Mill warehouse. We had an impromptu round of Firkin curling and discussed why it deserved to become an Olympic sport. We washed everything down, locked the doors and went home. And tomorrow? Tomorrow we do it all again.

This is what crafting is like at Eden Mill…

We are brewers and distillers of craft beer, gin and whisky.

The word “craft” is becoming an ever more popular buzzword in today’s marketing jargon. It is a word that can be all too easy to dismiss or glaze over. It has no legal definition in our industry. But we are craft. We are craft distillers and brewers because we are experts in our field. We are craft because we are hands on with our products from conception to consumption. We are craft because one minute we are sommeliers tasting everything in our midst, and the next we are mad scientists creating timesaving crazy contraptions. We are craft because sometimes it’s about exact measurements and sometimes it’s about intuition and a good feeling.

Our products are craft because we do not cut corners when it comes to flavour. They are craft because they are made with care, passion and laughter. We are craft because we love what we do… and think you will too, why not come and visit?

Jasper Daly
Brewer/Distiller
Eden Mill St Andrews