First single malt scotch

[Odin]

Exem,

What I learned about the subject, is that most of the New Make Spirit in single malt Scotch is pretty bad. Allmost no head cut taken out. Tails being rerun in next batches. A guy I know was in Scotland, toured a facility (I forgot which one) got a sniff of it and it burned his nose off.

Maybe they need to mature that long to get rid of most of that shit. If they would make cleaner cuts it would be better tasting sooner. But they say that it is the heads & tails that over many, many years create the increadible depth some single malts have.

Do you find that "depth" already back in your drink? I ask this because I also started making my first single malts. I am also curious to how you like the peatiness of your whisky with 3 ppm. The malt I could buy had 6 ppm which is twice as much, but because many whiskies have like 15 or even 20, 30 ppm (Islay even more sometimes), I wander what to expect from it.

I remember Dunderhead writing on more than one occasion that the malted versions of a grain give for a nices (fruitier? don't remember) taste. Now that is interesting, because this is off course a 100% malt whisky, where many of the recipes on this forum consist of 20 to 30% malted barley. Might the extra malt give it more character too?

And (going a bit off topic now) what would that mean for an 100% malted rye? Would love to try that too, once.

Odin.

PS: I asume you guys all ferment your single malt off the grain, to prevent tanins coming over, right?

[Dnderhead]

I dont quite under stand the problem? a single malt is just that "one malt"
and yes more heads will be rough at first but will mellow out with time.
acids from barrel? change these into different flavors, (look up artificial flavors)
this takes time.I have one I made 2 years ago and its just coming around.

[Exem]

Odin,

No I dont find incredible depth in my single malt. But it is rather smooth and smells a bit of coconut (after one week of distress aging). Yes maybe soctch distillers need so many years of aging to change nasty heads into smth nice. It should mean that we making spirits with clean cuts are not able to achieve great complexity even if we mature our spirits in barrells for long years.

I cannot say anything about peatiness as i never tried to make peaty whiskys. But i have plans to smoke malt myself on alderwood or on peat in future.

By the way i always include some feints (mixed heads and tails) into my spirit runs. To be more accurate that is 2 liters of feints (40 - 50 abv) into 16 - 18 litres of low wines ( 20 abv roughly), which gives me approximatelly 25 abv low wines for spirit run. I believe this helps a lot. The same thing is described in Ian Smiley book "Making pure corn whiskey". My first spirit was unbalanced and had a taste of raw alcohol which was not nice, and i believe it is because i did not have any feints to add into the spirit run. Next spirits made with feints proved to be much much better.

Now I am collecting feints from each run and hope to distill feints only in future when i have enough of them. Anybody tried this? Ian Smiley writes that this technique gives a very special whisky. I know that Smiley writes about making boubouns but I guess the same rules suit for single malts too, no?

Yes i ferment my single malts off the grain.

[Odin]

What Ian says should go for all whisk(e)y's. But ... him talking about feints is related to making whiskey in a fractionating (LM) column. Not in a pot still. I read his book like 4 times and what I understand is that it is the high abv of 95% the LM gives you that makes taste (esthers I think) jump over from head & tails fraction to the heart. In that process the hearts are getting more & more tasty over generations. Do you use a LM still for your whiskey? I tried it and I tried to duplicate his method but with very, very limited succes. Now, I have a CM with great tails compression, but that might just be the problems. I just don't (or hardly) get over tails when using my CM fractionating rig ...

So I pot distill my whiskey. At first with feints, but I stopped that. To me, in a spirit run by pot still, it felt like more heads & tails would just give my spirit run more ... well heads & tails. And after collecting a lot of feints I tried a spirit run with my potstill on feints and feints only ... and got a heart cut close to zero in size. So I stopped doing that.

But this is very intersting. I am a bit of a Smiley adapt myself (if only I could duplicate his ways ...). How do you distill? Potstill, LM?

And yes, I think that it takes those heads & tails to give a single malt that real and increadible depth. Like there is 10 layers in taste. I don't know for sure (not from my personal experience), but a lot of things I read state that it is the "off" alcohols that - over time - develop in the most interesting taste notes. And head aches, because that does not change over time.

Odin.

[Exem]

Oh really, i forgot that Ian doesnt use a pot still. I use a pot still (50 liter SS keg, and 10 meters long copper coil in cold water).
I find your post really interesting and sad too, as I have doubts now wheter i should bother running feints only.
My batches run with feints added do have some taste of feints really, but in a pleasant way. Maybe i will try to run a batch with no feints again, as i guess i made a mistake while fermenting the wash for my first batch. Maybe that was the reason of poor taste of the first batch, but not the absence of feints in spirit run.

So what do we do with feints left? I am collecting them, maybe i should throw them away? Another option would be to add some feints to some of the hearts, put a piece of charred wood in them and forget about it for long years..

Odin, As you mentioned 100 % rye malt distillate here, I am going to buy a sack of rye malt next week and give it a try. I will not be uzsing any feints here, and take lower OG, smth like 1.058.

[Odin]

Exem,

It keeps bothering me ... maybe I should retry Ian Smiley's way in a fractionating column with feints ... Somehow, I feel there is a way to do it and somehow build a bridge towards what happens in a flute (high flavour provile while distilling at 90% and more). Just a hunch, but I cannot let this go. Any flutist willing to chime in? Or at least willing to read up on what Ian Smiley says? Or others out there who did do Ian Smiley's approach successfully?

Exem, maybe we should do a forum search again. I know I did a while back and came up emptyhanded. You be willing to give it a try? And if both of us don't find it, maybe start a new thread on it?

What do you say?

Odin.

[Exem]

Ok Odin, Let's do it as you say

[Exem]

How about others? Do you guys include feints from previous runs into spirit runs when distillin single barley malt spririts in pot stills? What are the results?

[Odin]

Exem,

Also see this:

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 15&t=24388" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Odin.

[blind drunk]

How about others? Do you guys include feints from previous runs into spirit runs when distillin single barley malt spririts in pot stills? What are the results?

Also - http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... =1&t=18823

[Exem]

Here is an interesting interview with managing director of Kilchoman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJpBR7p51hc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow, where he says that their whisky with hardly any feints in it matures quicker. This should mean that our spirits should mature quicker too

[Coon-ass]

I dont quite under stand the problem? a single malt is just that "one malt"
and yes more heads will be rough at first but will mellow out with time.
acids from barrel? change these into different flavors, (look up artificial flavors)
this takes time.I have one I made 2 years ago and its just coming around.

That isn't exactly true. All Scotch, at least to be called scotch has to first, be made in Scotland and secondly, only be made from barley. Anything else is just whisky. Notice no E. In Scotland a single malt is considered a non-blend. They do blend casks but only from their distillery, thus making it a single malt. Blends are casks from various distilleries to meet the taste that the master distiller is trying to attain. But by default to be called Scotch it is always only barley.

I plan on doing this as well but with a twist. I have a 5 liter barrel on the way that I plan on aging some corn likker in. After I bottle it, I am going to reuse the barrel to age a barley only distillate. Just like the scotch distilleries do by only using charred white oak casks previously used at whiskey distilleries, most from the USA.Notice the E. no E is Canadian or Scottish. With an E is any other country, usually USA and Ireland.

Most good noses can detect American oak vs European oak. Sometimes the scotch is finished in other casks for 8 months to add a different taste, like sherry casks, Sauterne casks, port, etc. but as ralfy.com calls those....Poncy.

[blind drunk]

Here is an interesting interview with managing director of Kilchoman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJpBR7p51hc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow, where he says that their whisky with hardly any feints in it matures quicker. This should mean that our spirits should mature quicker too

Great video. A quick maturation is 5 years! Thanks for posting. I love u-tube.

[Redfox]

Ok I did the spirit run today. Here's how it went.

I chucked out the foreshots, then started collecting. Here's how the cuts went:

1) 82% - clearly heads, really strong taste. Has that solvent aroma to it.
2) 79% - Some heads, but it's starting to taste scotchy.
3) 76% - I can really taste the scotch and peat here.
4) 70% - More hearts.
5) 64% - More flavorful hearts.
6) 52% - Can start to taste some tails in here.
7) 36% - Tastes smoky, which I like. I'm definitely blending some of these tails in.
8 ) 20% - Tails.
9) 9% - Tails.

Gonna save the heads and tails for my next batch (there will definitely be a next batch).

Now it's time to get my oak staves ready. How am I gonna wait 3-5 months to drink this?