Cuts too wide?

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Spiritguy
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Cuts too wide?

Post by Spiritguy »

:?:
I’ve stripped and then spirit distilled a scotch style single malt whiskey but had a brain fart with my cuts due to rushing it and not concentrating. I’ve kept almost 75% (which sorta tasted/smelt ok) and only put 25% to feints.

Should I leave on oak for an extended time and hope this will eventually taste ok or shove it all back together, dilute and re spirit distill?
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by Sporacle »

Time and cuts are the keys, if you have the time then leave it be. Get something else going and forget about that one for as long as you can.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by EricTheRed »

As Sporacle said. Let it be.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by OtisT »

It’s hard to tell you what to do with it because we can’t tell how badly it is screwed up. From my experience, if you think you screwed the cut badly, time ain’t gonna help much especially if it is tails you went into too deep.

I’m gonna suggest you dilute and redistill what you have. It is my advice that noobs should learn to make a clean product properly before testing the limits of how much heads and tails a product can tolerate and still be drinkable in X years time. That is, unless you want shelves full of experiments that need to sit longer and few drinkable products to enjoy. Start smooth and work your way out.

Just my opinion. As you can see others disagree.

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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by NZChris »

If you do decide to dilute and redistil, fresh wash would be better than water.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by zed255 »

Narrow cut whiskey is a little flat / one-dimensional but it is all too easy to go too wide as a DIY'er. You don't have the benefit of a rickhouse full of barrels to put up product in to see where it goes.

I am inclined to suggest NZChris has the best option for a quick re-do without loosing too much flavour.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by Saltbush Bill »

OtisT wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 11:42 am It is my advice that noobs should learn to make a clean product properly before testing the limits of how much heads and tails a product can tolerate and still be drinkable in X years time. That is, unless you want shelves full of experiments that need to sit longer and few drinkable products to enjoy. Start smooth and work your way out.
Great advice Otis :thumbup:
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by Yummyrum »

I agree with Otis as far as too far into tails .
I did that on a batch and was horrible . That was about 6 years ago . Following everyones advise that it would get better with time , stuck it on the shelf and every few months I’d taste it . I gave up after a few years of trying .

I recently went to a distillery and sampled their top Whisky , over a $100 a bottle . All I could think of was that it tasted like mine .
So I git mine out after 6 years on the shelf and this is where you expect me to say it was amazing .

Sorry it still tasted as shite as the day I made .
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by jonnys_spirit »

You could mix it with fresh ferment or a couple strips of low wines topped with your questionable cut and any fresh ferment you might be able to top up with for that matter if you'd like to end up with more... I'd probably put the early heads into the fores jug too but you could mix that back into next spirit run as well and recover all the good stuff.

Or keep it aging on the shelf in case it comes around or as a reminder of how wide not to cut and test every so often :)

In any case make more single malt and good luck!

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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by frenzy »

Hi all. I’m in a similar boat, went wide on the tails. Aged for a year and meh.

When diluted and re-run, would you expect much larger portion of hearts?
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by Yummyrum »

Well if you went too far into tails last time , then you need to loose more this time , which will mean your hearts will be smaller .
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by frenzy »

Sorry if I’m being dense, but if I removed the heads and most tails the first time, wouldn’t there be a lower proportion of each the next time?
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by OtisT »

The heads cut would likely be really small, if at all. To cut some tails you will loose some hearts with it too. They are mixed together. You’ll have less at the end than you had when you started.
Last edited by OtisT on Sun May 22, 2022 2:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by hawkwing »

Less than original but likely more concentrated too. So the proportion might not be much lower. Also it often doesn’t take much to taint everything.

FYI 20 years doesn’t help too much tails.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by NZChris »

Heads and tails are not chemicals that can be removed. If you look at a graph of the various VOC's that come over during distillation, some start high and finish low, some start low and finish high, but they are all present right though the whole run, it's their ratios to each other and to ethanol that changes. Our job is to choose the portion of the run that we like, (hearts). The leftovers are called heads and tails, but they contain all of the same components as the hearts.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by Saltbush Bill »

frenzy wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 12:22 pm Hi all. I’m in a similar boat, went wide on the tails. Aged for a year and meh.
OtisT wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 11:42 am It is my advice that noobs should learn to make a clean product properly before testing the limits of how much heads and tails a product can tolerate and still be drinkable in X years time.
This is exactly why newbs being talked into making blends is fraught with problems......as above ,learn to make a clean hearts cut for drinking until you can do that perfectly every time. At least you end up with something you can drink.
Blending shitty old tails or heads in, or taking wide hearts cuts is something that comes after you have plenty of experience and a good stock of drinking booze.
Forums are littered with posts like this where people have gone too wide of the mark.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by BrewinBrian44 »

The best tip I’ve read on here about a good whiskey tails cut is doing the “rubbing test” on your hands, allowing the ethanol to evaporate. The nasty stuff really rears it’s ugly head and will smell like dirty socks etc in an other wise “okay” jar. There’s an odd fine line between the good smell of grain and what I described. Learning to discern the two comes with time and practice. Best be conservative to start. You’ll still be pretty well into the good tails at this point, so don’t fret about losing out on too much flavor.

The other great tip is to notice when the flavor in your early tails jars go from sweet and flavorful to very slightly bitter. This method should be considered useful for a wide cut only. Combined with the rubbing test, this is how I do my cuts and consider it about as wide as one should go. Like Yummy, I’ve ruined stuff by being greedy. Only takes one jar!

The almost hearts jars won’t go to waste as they make fantastic additions to your next spirit run, boosting both flavor and yield.

From my experience, smell is by far the best way to do cuts. Make sure to dilute your samples below 40% or they’ll all smell too similar and throw off your perception.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by BrewinBrian44 »

Saltbush Bill wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 2:49 pm
frenzy wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 12:22 pm Hi all. I’m in a similar boat, went wide on the tails. Aged for a year and meh.
OtisT wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 11:42 am It is my advice that noobs should learn to make a clean product properly before testing the limits of how much heads and tails a product can tolerate and still be drinkable in X years time.
This is exactly why newbs being talked into making blends is fraught with problems......as above ,learn to make a clean hearts cut for drinking until you can do that perfectly every time. At least you end up with something you can drink.
Blending shitty old tails or heads in, or taking wide hearts cuts is something that comes after you have plenty of experience and a good stock of drinking booze.
Forums are littered with posts like this where people have gone too wide of the mark.
I’ve never found anything worth “blending” by skipping nasty jars, ever. Maybe I’m missing out, but I have no idea what people are finding down there
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by Saltbush Bill »

BrewinBrian44 wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 2:50 pm the “rubbing test” on your hands, allowing the ethanol to evaporate. The nasty stuff really rears it’s ugly head and will smell like dirty socks etc in an other wise “okay” jar.
Good post, it works and works well on any product,Whisky, Rum or Neutral.
The tails linger as the rest evaporates off, makes sniffing out tails much easier imo.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by frenzy »

BrewinBrian44 wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 2:50 pm The best tip I’ve read on here about a good whiskey tails cut is doing the “rubbing test” on your hands, allowing the ethanol to evaporate. The nasty stuff really rears it’s ugly head and will smell like dirty socks etc in an other wise “okay” jar. There’s an odd fine line between the good smell of grain and what I described. Learning to discern the two comes with time and practice. Best be conservative to start. You’ll still be pretty well into the good tails at this point, so don’t fret about losing out on too much flavor.

The other great tip is to notice when the flavor in your early tails jars go from sweet and flavorful to very slightly bitter. This method should be considered useful for a wide cut only. Combined with the rubbing test, this is how I do my cuts and consider it about as wide as one should go. Like Yummy, I’ve ruined stuff by being greedy. Only takes one jar!

The almost hearts jars won’t go to waste as they make fantastic additions to your next spirit run, boosting both flavor and yield.

From my experience, smell is by far the best way to do cuts. Make sure to dilute your samples below 40% or they’ll all smell too similar and throw off your perception.
Thank you for the useful advice, I’ll certainly use it
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by 8Ball »

My two cents: Take a generous combined fores/heads cut and throw it into the fire starter jar. Next, collect what follows as hearts until what is coming out of the pipe STARTS to smell/taste bitter or funky to you. For me, this cut point occurs around the 62%-60% mark when floating in the parrot. Strip the rest of the spirit run out as feints to recycle onto the next spirit. I use a 5G all copper pot & no thumper and my spirit runs are 3-3.5 gallons (low wines, feints, and fermented wash/wort) at around 27% abv. Knock your hearts down to aging abv and put it away in a cask ( or, properly in glass) for at least a couple years.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by Avalir »

Thought I'd toss my thoughts in too. I'm personally of the mindset, if it doesn't taste good, or at least tolerable, right off the still, I don't put it in my finished product. From the time I started this hobby, I've never watered down my taste samples to decide where to make cuts or checked abv before bottling. If it smells headsy, don't put it in your mouth. If it smells tailsy, probably don't want that in your mouth. You should also pay attention to the mouthfeel, your body's instinctual reaction when you taste it, how it feels on the tongue, how it feels in the throat, how it feels on the lips. I've had many storebought whiskies in the 14+ year group that I'd argue are fairly easy to tell if they went too far into heads or tails just by taste and feel on the lips, tounge, and throat. I say this because even though people will say wider cuts can/will age out--and they can/do to a certain extent, there's a limit. If I can taste the overdone heads in a 14 year, I don't want to think about what made the cut when it was white. I do personally have a much harder time with the tails, so I usually use that gluck feel (for lack of a better way to describe it) that you get in the upper-mid part of your throat when swallowing when I'm tasting as the probably shouldn't venture to the next jar over point.
Hope some of that gave you some insight.
And to answer the actual question, when your gut instinct that cuts are too wide are so strong that you feel the need to ask, they probably are (I completely understand not wanting to step back or start over). I too would vote to redistill with your next batch of low wines and/or some wash.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by Sporacle »

Avalir wrote: Sat May 28, 2022 7:09 am I've never watered down my taste samples to decide where to make cuts or checked abv
On my spirit runs I'm between 80 and 55 abv depending on what I'm making, just curious are you tasting at that high an ABV?
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by Avalir »

Sporacle wrote: Sat May 28, 2022 1:19 pm
Avalir wrote: Sat May 28, 2022 7:09 am I've never watered down my taste samples to decide where to make cuts or checked abv
On my spirit runs I'm between 80 and 55 abv depending on what I'm making, just curious are you tasting at that high an ABV?
Probably so. Depending on my starting abv for my spirit run, my final product will clock in between 60-70 abv after cuts, so I can about garuntee I'm tasting them that high; I also taste off the still when I reflux (so I taste at 93+ abv there). I'll base my charge abv on what I want to be aging at (I don't like having to dilute after it comes off the still, so I plan ahead to get as close as possible); and I base this on statistically where my cuts clock in per my charge abv and my setup (once again, I only check proof after cuts are made). If I stick a spoon under the still for a fresh sample, I like to be confident I'm in the hearts because there's nothing worse than feeling like you just dumped mad chemicals on your tongue. On a 5 gallon charge, I'd say once my sniffer detects the transition from heads to hearts, I give it a good 1-1.5 pints before I'll start tasting off the condenser.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by Avalir »

On a side note, I do AG mashes. I probably wouldn't be willing (well, maybe willing, but not proud of myself) to taste off the still running a sugar wash.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by BrewinBrian44 »

I taste off the still and estimate my cut, I usually end up being right like 90% of the time. One day I’ll probably just do the cuts straight off the still.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by EricTheRed »

I also taste off the spout.
3 or 4 drops.
Then rinse mouth with water
Easy to pick up tails
But saying that, i still split into lots of jars, take abv for each jar and do proper cuts next day.
My taste tests off the spout are usually 95% spot on
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by Avalir »

EricTheRed wrote: Sat May 28, 2022 8:43 pm I also taste off the spout.
3 or 4 drops.
Then rinse mouth with water
Easy to pick up tails
But saying that, i still split into lots of jars, take abv for each jar and do proper cuts next day.
My taste tests off the spout are usually 95% spot on
Sounds a lot like how I do it. Only really do an actual rinse if I end up tasting one of those head side jars after the spirit run. During the run, I might only take a taste once every 30 minutes or so, stick a spoon under the spout and get 3-5 drops. But I keep a glass of water nearby to drink, so I guess you might call that a rinse. I also split into a ton of jars. It's not uncommon for me to collect a dozen 2oz jars when I sense the heads transitioning to hearts, then again when I detect tails coming on. The goal, for me, is to maximize quantity without sacrificing quality. If I collect in half pints or larger when it's transitioning on either end, it feels like my options become toss a lot of should have been good whiskey or taint the finished batch because I let the higher concentration of nasties fractions bleed into the good stuff.
I'll also add I'm not a terribly huge fan of white whiskey, but with experience you'll be able to taste the white and know how these initial raw flavors transform (or don't) once they're given time to sit on oak.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by NZChris »

I keep flavor notes throughout the run when doing a flavored product. My flavor comments from during the run often don't match what is chosen for the final blend of the jars so, if I had been trying to 'cut on the fly' by tasting at the spout, I would usually be way off the optimum product and yield I could have achieved.
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Re: Cuts too wide?

Post by bluc »

I started splitting every cut jar. After couple years getting.palette working i started mixing up the jars so I didnt rely on cut jar number to influence choice. I then started tasting off spout. I can quite comfortably pick cuts on fly. I still do a few jars either side of hearts and always catch the transistion..but hearts is collected in bulk .
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