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Liquor Review: Broker’s Gin

Published on April 13th, 2008 in Gin by Wade

Come on, who doesn't like the hat? Ever wonder what that bottle of booze wearing the little black hat might be? Well I’ll introduce you to it. It’s name is Broker’s, and it’s gin. He’s charmed to meet you, and I know you feel the same way. Broker’s Premium London dry gin, imported to us from the lovely people of England, is 94-proof and everything you expect a gin to be, not a cent more. But just owning a bottle that comes with its own cute little hat is enough to give this gin a try. Now that you two have met, let me tell you whether or not you should care about this bloke.

The distillery where Broker’s Gin is made is located near Birmingham, England and is over 200-years-old. There had previously been a brewery on the site, but this was converted to a distillery at a time when gin making became more profitable than producing beer. The distillery uses only traditional pot stills. Continuous distillation using column stills is more efficient and is used by the major brands, but pot stills are better for extracting maximum flavor from the botanicals in a traditional hand-crafted fashion. Plus, There is an underground spring beneath the distillery that provides a source of soft, pure water. The 200-year-old recipe for Broker’s Gin was chosen after taste-testing against several newer recipes. The base spirit for Broker’s Gin is a triple-distilled pure grain spirit made from English wheat. The flavor is provided by ten natural botanicals, the primary one of which is juniper berries, as in all gins. Dried botanicals are sourced from all over the world and shipped to the distillery in sacks. In the first step of the flavor infusion process, the botanicals are steeped (soaked) in the base spirit in the still for 24 hours. The still is then fired up for the final, fourth distillation, which completes the process.

Broker’s solo taste is exactly what you would expect a plain gin to taste like. It’s a sour, burning citrus flavor with nothing exciting or really disappointing coming from it. It doesn’t taste good, but its not too bad either. I can’t really say too much about a gin that is so plain and unimpressive. Even mixed in a martini or with tonic, it’s shine was a very lackluster one. Broker’s really suffers from the fat girl in a cute dress syndrome. The fat girl wearing a cute dress isn’t attractive; she is just a fat girl in a cute dress. Broker’s gin mixed with any good mixer doesn’t taste any more delicious; it just tastes like a basic gin combined with mixers that could probably used for something better.

Now you are probably wondering, why even spend a cent on this gin? The answer lies in the drunk it gives you. The 94-proof of this gin goes straight to work getting you where you want to be after a long day of work. A funny thing happens when Broker’s start taking hold of you. That bottle that I was so keen on before with its cute little hat really started to piss me off. “How dare this bottle wear a hat,” I began to grumble. The bottle started giving off that “I’m better than you because I have a hat” look. When you are drunk, especially the way Broker’s makes you drunk, nothing will piss you off more than someone who acts like they are better than you. I’ll be damned if I let a bottle treat me like that! Well, I guess drunken rage got the better of me, and the bottle didn’t survive the night. It caught the Office Space beat-down. The Beat-down

As what happens with any liquor that can cause a drunken fury as fast as this one, it left me with a harsh hangover. I felt like I caught the beat-down the night before. I had an upset stomach, headache, cotton mouth, and breath that could give the blind sight, then take it away. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it wasn’t any walk in the park, either. It took a good 12 hours before I even cared to look at booze again.

You should be able to find a 750ml bottle of Broker’s gin for around $20. That’s not much for the for the drunk you’ll get, but there are other gins that do it better for less. With that said, all those other gins will leave you with a hangover twice as bad. If you are a gin drinker, this is one you will probably want to pass on. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table. It tastes like they did just enough to this booze to call it gin and decided that was good enough. Maybe that’s why they gave the bottle a hat, to distract you from the basic 5 shots gin inside. Personally, I’ll stick to Tanqueray Rangpur, which is still the best gin I have ever tasted for the money. So give Broker’s a try if you just want a gin to get you wasted, but don’t expect much more than that.

Sipability – 5.0

Mixability – 5.5

Drunkability – 8.0

Hangover-ability – 6.0

Bang for the Buck – 7.0

Overall – 6.0