Psychopomp Microdistillery

We launched the world's first AI gin in November, a collaboration between Circumstance Distillery, Tiny Giant and Rewrite digital. Here we ask Liam and 'Ginette' (the Artificial intelligence created to design the world's first AI gin) a few questions about the process. First of all can you explain a little about ‘Artificial intelligence’ Liam: Artificial intelligence is using computers where human intelligence is normally required. The computer has the ability to acquire knowledge and apply it. AI is still in its infancy. Its not about to take over distilling spirits, let alone the world. Ginette: As a general definition, artificial intelligence (AI) refers to machines that can perform tasks that are beyond the human capabilities. These machines are able to act intelligently and autonomously. These machines have no specific skills or mental capabilities but can learn and interact with the human environment by making connections to what the human has learned. ...

The theme for our latest Distillers Table was ‘Halloween’. Like many other sessions before, we didn’t want to just create drinks using flavours that people expected. So we decided to also look at other death festivals from around the world and serve 3 drinks inspired by 3 different festivals. #1 Halloween We started close to home and the nearest to traditional Halloween flavours. Modern Halloween celebrations as we know it, are a mash up of lots of traditions from around the UK. We took our main inspiration from the Irish festival of ‘Samhain’ and the folk tale of ‘Stingy Jack’. As the story goes, several centuries ago in Ireland, there lived a drunkard known as "Stingy Jack". Jack was known throughout the land as a deceiver, manipulator and an otherwise dreg of society. On a fateful night, Satan overheard the tale of Jack's evil deeds and silver tongue. Unconvinced (and envious) of the rumours, the devil went to find out for himself whether or not Jack lived up to ...

51 weeks ago we opened the doors to Circumstance, to introduce the world to a little project that had been several years in the making. We had one hell of a party, over 200 people came to join us, Eatchu served up some tasty dumplings and Messrs Scott and Keegan knocked out copious amounts of gin and tonic from the makeshift pallet bar. We launched C.D.T. (Circumstance Distillery Tokens) and some lucky customers got their hands on some limited edition playing cards to mark the occasion. Once we had sorted out the hangovers and cleaned up after the party, it was time to get Circumstance fully up and running. Over the past year we have had a whole lot of firsts, fermented our first mash, distilled our first wash, filled our first casks and launched our first products. It has been a super steep learning curve and it's been a hell of a lot of fun! Time has flown by, but we have also managed to achieve a lot in 12 months. As well as releasing Barley, Cane and Mixed Grain...

Both of our distilleries, Psychopomp Micro-distillery and Circumstance Distillery, run almost entirely on open-source software. It has been this way from the beginning . In fact, the philosophy of open source permeates most of what we do.     The idea of ‘open source' originated in software and that is where the term is most familiar. In essence, software is open source when the source code is freely available. This means anyone can use, modify and re-distribute the software. I have always been inspired by the open-source model for 4 principal reasons.  The first reason is that there is nowhere to hide. If there is an error in the software, if it’s insecure, or contains malicious code, it can be found. The source code is freely available. This means open source projects are generally more trustworthy.   The second reason is that open-source projects are based on collaboration.. There is a recognition that the intelligence of the community is greater than that of any indivi...

We started blogging a while back, but as a growing business there are seldom enough hours in the day or days in the week so things like blogs get pushed to the bottom of the to do list. But, as a growing business things like social media and blog content are an important way of telling our story so we are going to try and get a bit more active. The team are going to take it in turns to get writing, so the next few blogs will hopefully be interesting, varied and give a little insight into the Psychopomp & Circumstance family and the things we get passionate about. Or it could just be the random incoherent waffling of five people who all happen to make booze together. We are going first in first up, so Liam is up to bat, followed by Danny, Mark, Steph and Matt. Happy reading. Team Pomp

You will have noticed that we only serve three types of drinks in the distillery; Gin & tonic, Martini and Negroni. Its not just because we like to keep things simple (although we do) its because to us these are the holy trinity of gin drinks. Gin and Tonic Arguably the most popular way to drink gin and possibly the most famous booze pairing ever. Everyone's recipe varies according to taste but in the distillery we serve ours: 50ml gin, 100ml tonic, in a tall glass with a long stick of ice and garnished with fresh citrus. The history of the G&T really begins with British colonial India, when the British troops would mix their medicinal quinine with their gin ration to make it more palatable. The rise of the G&T as a drink can clearly be traced back to the early days of Queen Victoria and the return of the expatriates from the Indian colonies who had developed a love for the concoction. Martini Made with gin and vermouth, the Martini is arguably one of the mo...

Summer invokes memories to many of visits to the beach, sunny holidays and of course ice cream but it also reminds me of childhood picnics with my family. So with that in mind I created this months drinks with some nostalgic English picnic inspiration. #1. I wanted to start on something light, fresh and floral so started with a classic French 75 recipe. Elderflower grew everywhere where I was a child and feels like a classic summer ingredient so I swapped the simple syrup for a home made elderflower one instead. Small bar gin (green cardamom, elderflower and lemon zest) was the gin for the job with it fresh green and floral notes. Then 50/50 fresh grapefruit and lemon juice and topped with Mumm champagne. Served alongside a classic cheese and cucumber sarnie on sliced white bread! #2. Robinson's squash was a staple in our picnics when I was young so I wanted to make an adult version for the second drink. I started by making a triple citrus shrub (orange, lemon and grapefruit)...