Singapore craft gin? How the Lion City is giving classic spirits a local flavour, courtesy of hip home-grown brands like Brass Lion, SoulSister and Compendium
- Could Singapore be Asia’s next craft spirits hotspot? The former British colony has clearly developed a taste for gin – and is now adding its own twists
- Brass Lion Distillery’s Singapore Dry Gin, SoulSister Spirit’s Singapore Edition Gin and Compendium’s Rojak Gin all effectively incorporate regional ingredients
After tasting native spirits from her travels around the world, during a one-year work break in 2012, Singaporean Jamie Koh returned home convinced that the Lion City needed a local spirit to call its own.
In September 2018, she launched Brass Lion Distillery, ironically just months after the June debut of the city’s first craft gin distillery, Tanglin Gin.
“As a Singaporean, I felt that it was a huge shame that we did not have a local spirit featuring familiar local ingredients – so I decided to create one,” says Koh, who also owns the city’s Chupitos Shots Bar and a southern American restaurant-bar, The Beast.
It took the entrepreneur “six long years” from ideation to realisation. During this period, Koh not only learned the art and science of spirit distillation, she also continuously tweaked the recipe for her flagship product, the Singapore Dry Gin. She aimed for a “lighter, more citrusy and floral” flavour to suit the city’s tropical weather, finally arriving at the current medley of 22 botanicals and herbs including torch ginger flower, lemongrass, galangal and mandarin peel, many of which are native to the region.
Today, Brass Lion Distillery is a small batch distillery with three gin labels and counting, including Butterfly Pea Gin (“a floral colour-changing gin”) and Pahit Pink Gin (“it’s a spiced gin that reminds me of a Christmas fruitcake”). A single malt whisky, made in collaboration with a local microbrewery and aged in a 200-litre ex-bourbon cask, was released in 2020.
Its distillery, which uses mostly locally and regionally sourced ingredients like dried mandarin peel, chrysanthemum, pomelo and kaffir lime, is set in a 4,000 sq ft industrial space in the southern part of Singapore. It also offers tours and classes to the public, the first of its kind in the country. And unlike commercial brands, its spirits are produced in small batches: juniper berries are hand-crushed and citrus fruits are peeled by hand because Koh believes that the “extra steps” will “enhance the quality of their products”.
The latest to join the fray is SoulSister Spirits, a brand that launched in May 2020 when Singapore was in full lockdown. Co-founded by Marianna Fossick and Michelle Fisher, its inaugural product made in collaboration with a local distiller is the Singapore Edition Gin, which bears Southeast Asian flavour notes of lemongrass, kaffir lime leaf and cinnamon, among others.