Hello to all our lovely followers and subscribers. In today's video we will be showing you our distillation process and how we make Copperfield London Drudge in.

The first thing we do in the morning is charge or fill the still.

Our 300 litre mini carter head still is called Clara and she is filled with the highest quality GNS, which stands for Grain Neutral Spirit, using an Atex pump.

It takes just under six minutes to charge Clara with the alcohol required for each run.

Next we turn off the Atex pump, switch over a hose and start filling Clara with highly purified water made on site using our reverse osmosis water purification system.

We add less water than GNS because the alcohol strength needs to be quite high.

Once the water is in and Clara has been charged to her 300 litre working capacity, the level of the alcohol and water combined just about reaches the bottom of the hatch as you can see here.

The hatch is then closed so that the contents can be heated.

Now it's time to turn on the steam generator. Our generator produces steam under pressure very efficiently and very quickly.

When the steam gauge reaches seven bar, a valve is partially opened to allow the steam to flow through flexible pipes into the heating coil inside Clara.

While Clara is heating up, we turn our attention to the botanicals. Many distilleries add their botanicals directly into the still.

At the Surrey Copper distillery however, we use what's called an infuser basket.

The botanicals are weighed out and placed in a strictly controlled order into a metal mesh basket to ensure the perfect gin is made.

The predominantly alcohol-based vapor that Clara produces passes through the botanicals in the infuser basket, picking up all those incredible flavors and fragrances along the way.

This process produces gins with a very smooth character.

Once the infuser basket's lid is sealed tightly closed, we open the steam valve to full.

It takes Clara about 80 to 90 minutes to reach boiling point and to produce those alcohol-based vapors.

Once the vapor reaches the top of the cartahead, the temperature dial there suddenly increases to around 80 degrees Celsius.

This is our cue to turn on the cooling pump.

After the vapors are passed through the infuser basket and picked up all the flavors and fragrances that make Copperfield gin so rich and complex, the vapor enters the condenser.

The cold water now being pumped through the condenser cools down the vapor flowing through copper tubes, causing the vapor to condense.

This condensed liquid is, in essence, very high strength gin.

The initial part of the liquid is known as the heads and is collected in a receiver tank.

The heads have a slightly soapy aroma which we don't want in the gin, so this first part will be disposed of.

Once the heads have been collected, a tap is opened so that the hearts, which will form the bases of the new gin, are collected separately.

After several hours the distillation is complete and the high-strength gin has been collected.

At this point the heaters in the steam generator are turned off, whilst the hatches on Clara and the infuser basket are opened to allow both to cool down sufficiently for them to be emptied and cleaned.

Here you can see the liquid left in Clara still bubbling away. As you can see, the level has dropped considerably.

The high-strength gin is then pumped to a storage vessel. Later we cut this gin back to the required alcohol strength or ABV using highly purified water before being bottled.

For volume 1 & 2 this is 45% and for volume 3 this is 42%.

We hope you have enjoyed watching how we distill our gin here at the Suricapa distillery.

If you have any other questions for us about our distillation process or our gins then please feel free to leave them in the comments below and we'll do our best to answer them.