31: Sara Sergent of Alpine Distilling Blends Science with Instinct and Flair in Botanical Spirits

Sara Sergent, master distiller for Alpine Distilling in Park City, Utah, has garnered countless accolades over her career, and today she works with some of the biggest names in the culinary world to bring their ideas to life, while also creating bespoke and diverse spirit expressions for guests at their social club. If there’s an ingredient out there, she’s probably tried it and worked through how it expresses best through distilling. Through the course of this episode, she shares that knowledge with us. Along the way, Sergent and host Molly Troupe cover:

• distilling challenging florals
• using vapor extraction to preserve delicate details in sensitive ingredients
• choosing which form of a plant—from root to flower—to use in distillation
• research methods for learning more about botanicals
• juniper variants from distant locales such as Japan and Croatia and their different impacts in gin
• the range of expression in different-origin angelica root
• maintaining botanicals in top shape for distilling and drying ingredients in-house
• the impact of different peeling methods on lemon expression

And more.

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