Little Brown Dog Spirits ltd. Fetternear Aberdeenshire Scotland
Little Brown Dog Gin Fascinating Aberdeen
Little Brown Dog – Distillers & Independent Bottlers
Little Brown Dog
Distillers & Independent Bottlers
Creating tasty things from our farm based distillery and cask maturation warehouse. Proudly producing Aberdeenshire Foraged Gin, the Little Brown Dog Single Cask series, Wee Mongrel blended whiskies and rums and the Experimental Spirit Series.
Little Brown Dog Gin
Aberdeenshire Foraged Gin
It’s called this because it’s made, by us, in Aberdeenshire, from bits of Aberdeenshire and it is gin.
It takes a year to make our gin.
Gin is easy eh, just slap a bunch of dry old stuff into a still and boom, gin…
Well we take a somewhat different approach.
It takes a year to forage and grow for our gin. Then six weeks of resting after distillation to allow the aromatic oils to relax and the flavour to develop.
This is not the easy way. This is detailed, intelligent and highly intricate distilling to create a gin with incredible complexity and texture.
It’s why our gin is found in Michelin starred restaurants and continues to win multiple medals and awards.
A year of Aberdeenshire in your bottle
April – 2 weeks to tap the birch trees as the sap rises
May – Picking beech leaves as they emerge and zing with fresh lemon flavours.
Planting Parsnips
June – Picking rhubarb
July – August – Collecting bee pollen from our own hives
October – November – Harvesting parsnips
December – Bare root planting juniper
All year – foraging for wood sorrel and looking after our bees.
We became bee keepers to make this gin. The bees are our best foragers and as well as providing us with local Aberdeenshire bee pollen to distill in our gin, help with pollination of the trees, flowers and grasses around us.
Cheers to the bees.
Tasting Notes
A modern dry Scottish gin. Packed full of juniper, waves of citrus, floral and woodland notes, with a hint of petrichor.
“Like sookin’ sherbet lemons, dipped in beeswax, while sitting in a scots pine forest after the rain”
Andrew
“Tastes like gin, but more betterer”
Chris
Gin with Texture
Distilled slowly in a dumpy wee pot still, we can carry over all the rich botanical oils into the spirit. This creates a luxurious, silky gin, that coats your mouth with each sip and builds flavour.
There are easier ways to make gin, but we cut no corners in our detailed processes to retain this texture and freshness.
The still has been modified to hold our own design of copper mesh botanical basket, to keep the fresh botanicals out of the boiling bowl and retain the vibrancy of our Aberdeenshire botanicals.
Botanicals
“Forage what we can, grow what we can’t and only buy what we cannot grow or forage sustainably”
Andrew
“Free ingredients are the best ingredients”
Chris
Andrew checking the bees.Planting juniper with the LBD
Scan yer Dram
To show you how much Aberdeenshire is each bottle, we geotag the grown and foraged ingredients using what3words. If the scan the QR code on the back of the bottle you can see all of this batch specific data. Maybe, one day, you might come to visit the birch tree that was tapped for the sap in your bottle!
Click here for What 3 Word locations of our foraged and grown botanicals
The Pretty Pretty Bottle
Back in the day, we hand etched each of the bottles. To continue to attempt this would be laughable, so we didn’t.
Because you’re maybe going to buy this from someone else, you’re that generous, we’ve made it look special so the person you’ve bought this for better say thank you.
Full Botanical List
What – Where – Form – Process – Flavour
Juniper – 95% Italian purchased – 5% foraged locally from a secret location (not GPS tagged for these beauties, they need to be protected) – Dry/fresh – Steep – Pine/resin
Coriander – French – Purchased – Dry – Steep – Spice
Angelica Root -Belgian – Purchased – Dry – Steep – Sweet aniseed
Orris Root – Italian – Purchased – Powdered – Steep – Floral/sherbert
Birch Sap – Foraged – Steep – Woody/mineral/caramel
Parsnip – Grown – Steep – Herbal/earthy/spice
Rhubarb – Foraged/grown – Steep – Sweet/sour
Beech Leaves – Foraged – Basket – Citrus/petrichor
Wood Sorrel – Foraged – Basket – Citrus/woodland
Bee Pollen – French – Purchased for now but locally from mid 2020 – Floral/honey/perfume
Lemon – Purchased – Location seasonally dependent – Fresh zest – Basket – eh lemon, obviously
Grapefruit – Purchased – As above – Fresh Zest and flesh – Basket low citrus/bitter
Serving Suggestion
There are none, we insist you drink this however you see fit, do what you like and let us know how you get on. We’re not going to come up with some random or unimaginative tonic/garnish combination driven by a commercial arrangement. We enjoy ours with a smug sense of cynicism.
0.2% more betterer than Navy Strength
UPDATE – Our LBD GIN – Latitude Strength , joined the line up in March 2021. Distilled at 57.2° North, bottled at 57.2%abv. All the good things about LBD GIN turned up to 11. A creamy texture and tongue spanking botanicals mean this gin makes the perfect luxurious martini. Ideal for when you wan the gin to stand out in a cocktail and coat your mouth with each sip.
Well done, you read all the way to the bottom. You deserve another cute LBD pic to celebrate. If by some masochistic reason you desire any more detail please get in touch and we will relish the geek chat. Banksy was the original Little Brown Dog, she passed away in 2022 aged 15 but her legacy lives on. Winnie the cocker spaniel joined the team in 2020 and Peedie bounced into the distillery in 2023 and has been causing chaos since.
Little Brown Dog Gin Fascinating Aberdeen
Little Brown Dog Gin Fascinating Aberdeen
Little Brown Dog Gin Fascinating Aberdeen
Sustainable distilling
Built into the old grain store, our distillery is made almost entirely out of reclaimed materials. With stainless worktops repurposed from a veterinary xray table, a gumtree kitchen and fire doors from the Macallan Distillery.
Little Brown Dog Gin Fascinating Aberdeen
Our provenance is more provenancy
Spirits created with attention detail but without buzzwords and fluff. Full transparency of process, we publish our methods and ingredient origins. If we grow it or forage it, we geotag it.
Scan Yer Dram
Scan the QR code on the back of our bottles to geek out on all the bactch specific data. Whether thats the what3words locations of all the grown and foraged ingredients in that bottle of gin, or the locations, ferments, cask types and ages in our Wee Mongrel Blends.
Casks with Character
If you’re going to bottle a single cask, it needs to be better than good, there needs to be a part of the character that makes it worth singling out. A balance between spirit character and wood influence.
Little Brown Dog Gin Fascinating Aberdeen
Little Brown Dog Gin Fascinating Aberdeen
Best of 2022 LBD Spirits The Movie
Award winning
Best Cask Aged Gin in Scotland 2022 – #projectQUERCUSACER – Gin Cooperative Awards
2nd Best High Strength Scottish Gin 2022 – Latitude Strength – Gin Cooperative Awards
World Gin Awards Bronze 2022 Unlimited Edition, Latitude Strngth and Design Award
3rd Best Distilled Gin Scotland 2021 – Aberdeenshire FOraged Gin- Scottish Gin Awards
IWSC Bronze 2020 – Aberdeenshire Foraged Gin
Excellence in Sustainability Finalist – Scottish Gin Awards 2021
SLÀINTE
Find the full and incredibly wordy origin story for our Aberdeenshire Foraged gin archived here
Geotagging
Our provenance is more provenancy than yours
We’re committed to fully disclosing our ingredient origins as well as publishing our methods.
We publish the what3word locations of all our grown and foraged ingredients, so you can see exactly how foraged and how Aberdeenshire our Aberdeenshire Foraged Gin is.
Forage what we can
Grow what we cannot forage
Only buy what we cannot forage or grow sustainably
You know, because you can’t really enjoy your G&T unless you know the exact birch tree that was tapped or the 3m square where the wood sorrel was foraged… Yaldy
Scan the QR code on the back of your bottle to go straight to the specific batch information for your bottle, or click below.
We’ll keep this page updated for each batch. Some of the locations will be pretty constant as some of the botanicals are only available for a few weeks of the year so we collect for a year’s production and freeze them.
