Ginned Up Flavor

Old Tom Inspires a New Generation of Brewers.

- Ezra Johnson-Greenough

With the recent popularization of gin barrel-aged beer, it’s easy to forget that beer and gin were once bitter enemies, as famously illustrated by the English artist and satirist William Hogarth. His moralizing 1751 prints “Beer Street” and “Gin Lane” depicted the evils of gin versus the merits of beer. Today, we owe the new found friendship of these two beverages to a previously extinct variety of 19th century gin called Old Tom.

Gin has its origins in Holland, where it was used as a medicinal drink to treat everything from gallstones to gout. Popularization occurred when the British discovered it during the Thirty Years War and nicknamed it “Dutch Courage.” Eventually, the drink branched off into its two best known styles: Dutch Jenever and London Dry. Jenever is a sweeter, aged gin that’s less juniper-forward, closer in taste to whiskey, and still common in the Netherlands. London Dry, meanwhile, came about with the advent of the column still, which allowed for a smoother neutral spirit that is dry and more juniper heavy.

“Pot distilled Old Tom gin was in fashion until the mainstream rise of the column still,” says Art Tierce, assistant distiller at Oregon’s Ransom Wines and Spirits. As he explains it, the column still’s invention in the 19th century led to the dry, light bodied, and neutral but heavily aromatic London style of gin most people are familiar with today.