Set the insoles aside to air-dry while you clean the rest of the shoe. But if you’re looking for an old-school beverage that really set the stage for modern gin, that would be genever (pronounced like “believer”). To understand the juniper connection and the roots of both genever and gin, let’s dive into the fascinating history of gin. As we’ll see in the history of gin, Old Tom predates London gin and comes from a time when distillers were using sugar and strong botanicals to cover up the flavor of low-quality base spirits. This isn’t an official designation as much as a colorful nod to gin’s history. It’s easy to forget about what happens to gas when we drive our cars around, especially because most of the time the byproduct of the combustion that’s happening within our engines is pretty much invisible. What are smaller gas engines usually cooled by? In both cases, the use of gas was nearly universally condemned. Instead, like with many other similar tools, I had to fill the water tank with hot tap water before use. The water looks unremarkable, but it is contaminated with synthetic compounds called fluorochemicals, which have been generating increasing concern around the world.

Juniper is an evergreen shrub found around the world and its berries or “cones” are what give gin its distinctly piney, peppery, citrusy, herbaceous kick. Genever is often darker in color and more malty in flavor than gin, but they both share a top note of juniper berries. You might also see bottles labeled as “Genever Gin,” “Geneva” or “Hollands Gin.” This style of gin isn’t really gin at all, but a precursor of gin that’s distilled from a whiskey-like “malt wine” instead of a neutral spirit. Genever is a traditional distilled spirit from Holland (it’s the Dutch word for “juniper”). While everyone who drives has heard the word “octane”, very few people understand the term or its relationship to fuel. Just as there are varying levels of vegetarianism, such as veganism, lacto-vegetarianism, and lacto-ovo-vegetarianism, a person who eats a clean diet may have different ideas on what foods a clean diet should contain. High acidity levels in the ash can change soil composition, making it impossible for some species of plants to survive.

Making and storing memories is a complex process involving many regions of the brain, including the frontal, temporal and parietal lobes. This is called steeping and is similar to making a pot of tea. In both the European Union and the United States, a bottle of liquor can be called “gin” if it’s made from distilled neutral spirits that are flavored with either natural botanicals, extracts or artificial flavors, and bottled at no less than 80 proof. The second way is to suspend the botanicals is called vapor infusion. These botanicals can be incorporated into the distilling process in two ways. Some distilleries even mix the two methods to produce a distinctive balance of flavors, seeping some botanicals directly in the base spirit and suspending others above. While gin is traditionally made with grain-based spirits (barley, wheat, rye, corn, etc.) it can also be made with base spirits distilled from grapes, potatoes, apples, molasses, honey, even milk! The distillation process was pioneered during the Islamic Golden Age and used by alchemists to isolate the pure “spirits” of various substances.

Aged gin is a relatively new category and distillers are experimenting with the flavor profiles of aging gin in casks that previously held other spirits like vermouth. Italian monks began experimenting with distillation to create various “aqua vitae” or “waters of life.” They made these elixirs by distilling wine with local medical herbs and plants like rosemary, heather, laurel and of course juniper. If you visit your local liquor store, you’ll find lots of different bottles labeled as gin. You may find that a steam cleaner that’s perfect for eliminating bed bugs, for instance, isn’t the best for more sensitive wood floors. You may have given your fingernails little thought over the years. Back in the 19th century, sailors wanted to test if their gin rations had been watered down, so they would drizzle some gin over a pinch of gunpowder and take a match to it. The inspection camera is fitted with a camera snake which varies in length, with some models offering snakes over 100 feet long.