Gin, or GENEVA, an alcoholic drink, distilled from malt or from unmalted barley or other grain, and afterwards rectified and flavoured. The gin which forms the common spirituous drink of the lower classes of London and its vicinity is flavoured very slightly with oil of turpentine and common salt. Each rectifier has his own particular recipe for regulating the quantities to be used, but usually about 5 fluid ounces of spirit of turpentine and 3½ lb. of salt are mixed in 10 gallons of water; these are placed in the rectifying still, with 80 gallons of proof corn-spirit, and distilled until the feints begin to come over. The product is then used either unsweetened or sweetened with sugar. Potato spirit is used in the manufacture of inferior qualities of gin.
The word gin is a shortened form of geneva, so called by confusion with the Swiss town of Geneva, but itself really a corrupted form of the Old Fr. genevre, 'juniper,' from the Lat. juniperus. It is well known that juniper-berries are still used in flavouring the spirit made from rye-meal and malt in Holland, where it is an article of great manufacture, chiefly at Schiedam; hence it is often called Schiedam or Hollands, as well as geneva and gin. The larger part by far of the spirit made in Holland is exported to other countries, especially to North America and northern Europe. It was formerly always exported in bottles, a square form of which is still familiar, but casks are now much used as well.
Almost every gin-palace keeper in London has some vile recipe for increasing the pungency and giving a factitious strength to the much-diluted sweetened spirit sold under this name. A mere enumeration of the articles usually employed will give some idea of the extent to which sophistication is carried on with this spirit: roach alum, salt of tartar (carbonate of potash), oils of juniper, cassia, nutmeg, lemons, sweet fennel, and caraway, coriander seeds, cardamoms, and capsicums, and, it is alleged, even sulphuric acid. Excess of turpentine is the most common and perhaps the worst adulterant. Still much sound gin is made in London—the diuretic qualities of its 'Old Tom,' as well as of Hollands, are well known.