Home Distiller

I have gotten pretty good at this of late and wanted to share a story. The trick to finding tails is being able to smell them and they don’t smell like wet dog or cardboard to me. What I found works is to take your inaugural sacrificial cleaning run and save it for posterity. If that’s 5 gal at 10% collected in 8oz jars it should break out like this. The first 8oz is foreshots and dangerous. The next 8 is marked jar 1 and clearly heads. (Well, it seems to be most of the time) Jar 2 might be hearts 3 and 4 are clearly hearts 5-6-7 your getting into tails and at 7 is likely tails. Seal these all up and revisit them in the morning. Check each jar with the alcoholometer and mark the first jar at 50%. Get a brandy sniffer from the antique store and use a 5cc syringe to measure out 5cc of water and 5 of your sample. Smell this and you can pretty easily determine which jar has the odd odor. Don’t worry too much if your not sure about one. If 5 smells like vodka, 6 is ok and 7 smells like something is clearly off you got your dog. Now mix that jar “7”with 50% water and marks it tails. Smell it every day for a week or two and use it as a reference for checking your samples as they come off the condenser. You can quickly educate your nose by having a good reference smell.

It depends on the wash...different ferments produce different smells (and tastes). Training is good, but there are no absolutes in this hobby. And experience is the best teacher.
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Personally I can tell the smell of tails, but I would not call it wet dog. I have also found that smell is not as good an indicator as taste. Best to dilute and taste.

In my limited experience I have no problem with identifying tails by smell and taste. However I am having trouble finding the break between late heads and early hearts. Late heads are very seductive and I have to take a wide cut to ensure I do not include too much heads. I hope with more experience I can id heads like I can with tails.

Mike6090 , I think your trick to bottle the stuff for reference is a good one . Certainly only having 7-8 choices will make cuts of a real run hard but having this many for training purposes is good
I also commend your dilution recommendation. ...I also endorse such methods Better Cuts with Better Dilution

I also concur with the Tails not smelling like wet dog or cardboard ....musty smell ...yeah I get that . Re-fluxed tails verses pot still tails are like chalk and cheese .Tails from a potty and even mildly refluxed still have the Musty smell ,once you get to 4 plates in flute or a packed Reflux still , then Musty is no longer and a very strong but nasty smell/taste like predominantly 1-Butanol prevails due to the compression .

I agree with yummy, very different animal comparing flavor from a pot still vs reflux.

Bushman wrote:I agree with yummy, very different animal comparing flavor from a pot still vs reflux.

more like wet squirrel?

When I started this hobby I could not tell the difference when running my pot and thumper. But the tails from my first run of the reflux still was like a kick in the butt - it was crystal clear. Good post and well worth adopting if smell evades you. Thanks.

+1 Mike6090... I like this idea...especially for anyone new to the hobby, It will give them a very good idea what their looking for, considering most will have never smelled or tasted heads and tails, this is a good place for someone with no reference point at all to start. They may only need this for the first half dozen runs...then you'll have the know-how. Good thinking !

In the last two weeks I have had two different groups who asked what a particular bad flavor was in a friends spirits and another craft distillery. I let them smell tails and they both said, that's it. It does appear that it is not obvious when you are into the tails for everyone.