Bluecoat American Dry Gin from Philadelphia

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed)
Feb 17th 2009 at 2:02PM

We recently had a chance to try Bluecoat (right), the only American dry gin, after seeing it recommended by several top mixologists. The citrusy nature of Bluecoat, which is distilled in Philadelphia, is particularly appealing. They use organic American orange and lemon peel, combined with a "proprietary blend" of other US-sourced citrus.

The five times distilled spirit in a dashing cobalt blue bottle is crafted using a custom-built, hand-hammered copper pot still. It's distilled to be an extremely pure spirit, without the harshness of impure alcohols often present in other gins, and uses triple-filtered water combined with grain neutral spirit created from rye, wheat, barley and corn.

Only certified organic botanicals are used in order to ensure no outside influences on flavor, and Bluecoat uses only organic juniper berries which, in comparison to the typical berries used in most gins, transmit spicy, earthy notes as opposed to pungent evergreen ones. The blue bottle with gold highlights personifies the historic blue jacket and gold buttons of the Bluecoat Revolutionary soldiers.

Tags: Bluecoat, Gin, Philadelphia