Most people get haze in the tails. I have not experienced that. I get haze in the fore-shots and I determined that it is Tert Amyl that occurs there.
But now I have experienced another situation of haze. I had ten ounces of heads that was really smelling medical. I don't drink these heads but I use them for cleaning and other organic chemistry in my lab. I do more in my lab than just brewing and distilling. I also do the same with a lot of my tails. Since tails are low abv it usually means I need to redistill so I pour the heads and tails together and then run them through to get high percentage alcohol that I put aside.
Today I did that. Poured ten ounces of heads into ten ounces of tails. Both heads and tails where clear before pouring them together but as soon as they mixed they went foggy. Not just a bit but milky white. Anybody on here know what's going on?
I'm no expert but this is what I have found with my Rum.
Going through the process of learning to make my cuts
I was very conservative. As I started to work my way out from the middle on each consecutive run I would add the outer iffy jars to the hearts and see how that effected taste and nose after mixed. Knowing that the tails would get cloudy it was easy to know when to stop running but a few jars before that would cloud up after adding my water.
I kept adding a little more heads for the flavor untill the drink was to "headsy". After making cuts on most spirit runs I put most of my rum on oak but keep a small amout for white rum. When I would cut the white rum to drinking strength it would get very lightly clouded. However when I cut what had been on oak this did not happen. When I backed off on how far into the heads I would keep the white rum no longer clouded up .
I dont recall reading about the heads getting cloudy but that is what was happening. My guess is that after the same rum was on oak for a time whatever would cause the cloudyness was filtered out . Now that I have narrowed my cuts on the heads side I no longer have the issue with white rum.
I would think your "cleaning" supply got cloudy because of the tails being mostly water and then you mixed it with the heads.
Someone with a lot more knowledge than me might respond and know better .
quite common when going sub 46%
if it's in your finished booze you can chill filter it away if you're bothered http://www.maltmaniacs.net/E-pistles/Ma" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow ... whisky.pdf
I did a bit more research on this and it is called the Ouzo effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouzo_effect" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow It is caused by the Fusil Oils that are in the tails. When they are joined with the High proof they become macerized with the water at a 1 to 3 micron size level. Same Reason Ouzo is cloudy.
