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HI Guys,

So this last weekend a made my first attempt at a Gin using a 40l Potstill (Homemade) and a thumper.

I had about 4 litres of feints from a rum that a ran the weekend before and added that to about 3 litres of 60% from a a sugar wash. I diluted everything down to 40% with purified water which gave me about 12Litres of wash. I put my botanicals into the thumper (thats a discussion for another forum ) with about a litre of the wash.

from the very first 200ml Jar I was running at 82% to 85% ABV it ran at that level down to about 5 Litres in total and then tapered very quickly down to about 10% where I shut down (About another 1l).

My question is this, do I still apply the 1/3 rule in terms of heads/Hearts/Tails? the tails were quite obvious from taste and smell, but I had alot of difficulty identifying the heads/hearts cut. In the end I basically took the middle third, added about 400ml of the tails which I liked the flvour of and then diluted to 43% ABV. I now have close to 4litres of Gin at 43% ABV. I'm happy with the final product, but I cant help feeling like I left some good likker in the heads?

You aren't taking traditional cuts with gin. Assuming you're using good neutral or vodka, go with the odins easy gin method to begin with.

For every liter of diluted neutral you're redistilling, toss the first 10ml, collect 400ml, ignore the rest. Keep the first 10ml cut the same size until you're over 40l of maceration. Scale up the 400ml based on your batch side. This is just a paraphrase from Odin's easy gin recipe.

If you use this as a starting point, you can adjust based on your own taste. Personally I stretch it out a little further because I like it.

Go by your taste, but keep in mind the further you go into "tails" even if it tastes good, the more likely to are to get oils coming over to make your distillate cloudy after dilution.

You should not have been having to make cuts because your base should already have been neutral with cuts already made.

Also if you're following a rule of volumes, rather than tastes in your normal cuts, you're probably doing it wrong.

Two threads worth a read:

* Odin's Easy Gin
* Kiwistiller's guide to cuts

Rum fients seems an odd choice as a base for Gin.

You should have asked your question before you put the feints in with your botanicals. Run it into lots of jars, then try various blends of the jars to find a blend that you like... and don't do it again.

Ok,

So i clearly made a very noob mistake just jumping into questions without reading up a bit. Thanks for your patience guys.