Uses for gin distillery waste botanicals?

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Birdie Wife

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A smll artisan gin distillery opened this year just up the road and they are looking for ways that their waste botanicals might be used for another purpose rather than just dumped or composted. It's a mixture of all sorts of lovely stuff, mainly juniper berries, coriander seed, orris root, licorice, water mint, orange peel. I said I'd take some and do a bit of experimenting to find way i could add it into soap. There are plenty of oils left in the material- and I have a few kilos of the stuff so plenty to work with!

So I'm looking for ideas...

So far, here's what I've thought of :

1. Dry the berries, grind up and and use as an exfoliating additive in cp soap.

2. I have a pot still that I use to make hydrosols (love my gadgets!). I could run the material through the still and use it to dilute liquid soap. I think this is probably the only way to preserve the scent.

3. As above, but use the hydrosol as the liquid substitute in cp soap. As the level of EO is going to be quite low, i doubt the scent would come through , but i think its a go anyway.

Any ideas? Any comments on the above? Can't wait to get started!
 
I would add oil and infuse it by heating the material then leaving it for a few weeks, shaking the container daily. After a few weeks strain out the material and use the oil for soap.
 
Very cool.

We do a soap for a local brewery with dried hops. It is pretty neat looking
 

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