It’s not often that you hear a comparison between distilling alcohol and writing computer code. But then again, not many distillers were once programmers.
“I can be incredibly nerdy,” admits Dimple Yuen, taking a seat at the tasting counter inside Two Moons, the Chai Wan distillery she runs with her husband, Ivan Chang. “If I like something, I can drill really, really deep into that one particular thing. I love programming because it’s hyper-focused. You’re solving this one problem the entire day. And I see that in distilling too.”
But there’s one important difference, she notes. “What distilling has that programming doesn’t is creativity. It’s like cooking, in a way, except my tool isn’t a wok, it’s a still. I can experiment with different flavour combinations, different alcoholic strengths, different techniques to create different flavour profiles. So it’s like the best of both worlds — super geeky but also super creative.”
When Two Moons opened in the summer of 2019, it was Hong Kong’s first new distillery in generations, opening a few months before the city’s only other gin distillery, N.I.P. And like its counterpart a few stations up the Island Line, Two Moons was driven entirely by the curiosity of two founders whose enthusiasm for gin gradually evolved into something much more serious.
The story begins a decade ago, in 2016, when Yuen and Chang were both working corporate jobs. “We thought, maybe it’s time to look for a new adventure,” says Chang, whose background is in hotel management. “Our first idea was to become scuba instructors, because we like diving. But it was also a period when the craft gin wave came to Hong Kong.”
A spirit unlike any other
A year earlier, in a former table tennis hall in Sai Ying Pun, Ping Pong 129 had opened as Hong Kong’s first dedicated gin bar. Yuen and Chang began visiting and quickly found themselves fascinated by how varied gin could be. “We got to try Italian gin, which could be quite different from German gin, which could be quite different from Japanese gin — so we got quite interested in this spirit,” says Chang.
It was exactly this diversity that appealed to them. “Compared to many other spirits, gin has perhaps the last restrictions or constraints you need to follow,” says Yuen. “As long as you have juniper berries, you can put anything else you want, however you want. The sky is the limit for creativity.”
Each gin reflects the place it’s from and the ambitions of its distillers. “A distiller once gave me a bottle of gin to try,” recalls Yuen. “It wasn’t my style of gin, but when he told me it was made in memory of his mother, who had passed away recently and who used to keep bees — he used honey from her garden. The way he told the story to me was so personal, so memorable, that even today, I always think about that distiller and wonder what they’re doing.”
In 2018, the couple arranged a trip to the United Kingdom to visit craft distilleries and learn more about the process of making gin. “We chose micro-distilleries because we could talk to the owners and head distillers face-to-face,” says Chang. “And during that trip, we actually made our first bottle of gin.”
They gave it a cheeky name — Virgin — and brought it back to Hong Kong to share with friends. “We did a blind tasting with five of six internationally established brands. And our friends consistently chose ours as their favourite or second-favourite gin. That was the moment we thought, ‘Maybe we have talent. Maybe we can start our own distillery in Hong Kong.’”
A novel idea
Unbeknownst to any of them, Chang and Yuen got to work setting up their distillery at the same time as N.I.P.’s Jeremy Li and Nicholas Law. And as the two duos were working in parallel, they faced many of the same challenges.
One of these was actually getting a still. Just as N.I.P. faced scepticism from manufacturers who wondered why somebody in Hong Kong wanted to buy a small, custom-made copper pot still, Two Moons needed to convince one of the world’s most renowned still makers that their intentions were pure.
“This is our true hero,” says Chang, gesturing towards the copper still that sits behind the glass wall dividing Two Moons’ tasting room from its production area. “It’s made by the Müller family, who have been making stills for four generations.” They came into contact at a gin show in London, but when Chang emailed them about ordering a still, they never replied. “So I got a friend in Germany to call them and they told my friend they had never heard of anyone making gin in Hong Kong — so they were suspicious. They were worried we would steal their technique and duplicate it somewhere else.”
Their friend made the case that Chang and Yuen really were planning to open a distillery — and so the Müllers agreed to make them a 100-litre still that was much smaller than they normally produce. Sebastian Müller, who runs the business with his two brothers, came to Hong Kong to install the still himself.
“When we saw it, we thought it looked like a moon, so we named it Luna,” explains Chang. “That’s how the distillery got its name. It was like two moons coming together — the moon in the sky and the moon right here.”
The distillery opened its doors in July 2019 and began producing a refined version of the Virgin gin that Chang and Yuen had made on their trip to the UK. Calling it their Signature Dry Gin, it’s a Hong Kong twist on a classic London Dry, with 12 botanicals including sweet tangerine peels (柑皮 gwat1 pei4), Chinese almond (南北杏 naam4 bak1 hang6) and Chinese liquorice root (甘草 gam1 cou2) in addition to the usual juniper berries.
“It’s a sipping gin that we wanted to be complex but balanced — like Cantonese food, which is our favourite cuisine,” says Chang.
Controlled experiments
Two Moons have taken a cautiously deliberate approach to expanding their portfolio, with only two gins in addition to the Signature Dry. “Each one is completely different because we don’t like to make gins that are too similar,” says Yuen.
Calamansi Gin was the couple’s second gin. They wanted to create a more contemporary, citrus-forward spirit and found themselves inspired by a classic cha chaan teng beverage: 鹹檸七 (haam4 ning2 cat1), made by infusing salted limes in 7-Up. The couple were inspired to use calamansi instead of lime after having lunch in a Malaysian restaurant that served the small citrus alongside its laksa. “Then we discovered there is actually a farm growing calamansi right here in Hong Kong,” says Yuen.
The gin has just three botanicals: juniper berries, calamansi and — somewhat unexpectedly — spruce needles, which are used to round out the flavours and give the gin more complexity. “You’ll find the oils in spruce are actually very similar to citrus oil, so it adds another kind of citrus flavour, and also this resinous, piney note that complements the juniper,” says Yuen. To achieve the full thirst-quenching effect, she recommends serving it with a bit of salted tonic.
The distillery’s third gin, Five Flowers Tea, is inspired by a classic herbal tea, 五花茶 (ng5 faa1 caa4) made from chrysanthemum, honeysuckle, kapok flower, frangipani and kudzu. “It’s meant to bring the body back into balance and expel extra heat and humidity,” says Yuen.
Like Magnolia Labs’ Dennis Mak, Yuen and Chang have an affinity for the herbal tea shops that are a staple of most Hong Kong neighbourhoods — but which are slowly disappearing as younger generations eschew traditional Chinese medicine. “It’s so culturally significant, we wanted to do something to continue this legacy,” says Yuen. “If people aren’t drinking herbal tea anymore, we hope they’ll be drinking this gin.”
An unexpected collaboration
There’s a fourth gin on the way, this one made with ginger as the star botanical. “Everyone in Hong Kong has a piece of ginger on their counter,” says Yuen. “You can’t avoid it. It’s in soup. It’s in seafood. It’s hidden in your chicken marinade. It’s an ingredient that is super versatile and also essential in Chinese cuisine.”
Making a new gin requires trial and error, and for that, Yuen didn’t want to risk making a whole hundred-litre batch only to discard it. So she and Chang decided they needed a miniature still they could use for experiments. “We decided to order a small ready-made still online, but when it arrived, it was leaking, there were dents in it — we weren’t happy,” she says. “Then someone introduced us to Ping Kee Copperware. They were the last two coppersmiths in Hong Kong who knew the traditional hand hammering technique.”
It turned out the coppersmiths, who are brothers, started out making equipment for Hong Kong’s booming industrial sector in the 1960s. They even made props for Bruce Lee movies. Yuen and Chang asked if they could fix their still. “The interesting thing is, these two masters don’t drink a lick of alcohol,” says Yuen. “They were like, ‘Number one, what’s a still? And number two, what’s gin?’ But they were so open-minded and willing to listen. It was this great cross-generational and cross-craft project.”
The coppersmiths ended up essentially rebuilding the miniature still from scratch. “This may be the very first copper still made in Hong Kong,” enthuses Yuen. And it may well be the last: the coppersmiths have since retired, with no apprentices to take over their business.
Yuen sees parallels between what she and Chang are doing. “You hear about brands that have been around for 50 or even 100 years and they decide to close down,” she says. “I hope we are establishing a new generation that represents Hong Kong. There’s only two gin distilleries in Hong Kong, but we know how difficult it is. We kind of understand each other. We’re both trying to get people to appreciate that we’re local. That we’re made in Hong Kong.”