Early/middle/late tails

[pope]

Okay not 'three' because I'm sure a 'jar' is a different proportion to the still charge for everyone. But I consistently notice that, before any musty aromas, my first 'tails' jar smells fine but has a bitterness I dislike. Usually the way I fill jars, the next two seem worth keeping before any mustiness or cloudiness shows up. This is consistent for a rye/oat/wheat, panela, agave, and a prickly pear at the moment. I can't decide so they're mostly blended up with just a few jars lingering around, slowly filling up my bench with indecision. I'll probably measure out two tasters with and without the questionable jars to make my own solution case-by-case. Took eight years of making hooch but now all of a sudden something's different.

BUT, I am curious if anyone else feels this way about their early tails. Not looking for a spoon-fed solution, just curious if anyone else has similar experiences.

[NZChris]

Rather than basing cut decisions on tastings of individual jars, I recommend making up a tasting sample from your obvious hearts jars, then adding to it from jars from either end until you find which jars are one too far. Just because a jar tastes a bit strong of something on it's own, doesn't mean that it's flavor isn't a valuable addition to the flavors in the final blend.

In my shed, there are no 'early tails' etc. Just tails. The last jar that makes it into the final blend is hearts, not early tails, regardless of what it tasted like on its own. My heads & tails go into my feints collection for future reprocessing, often with a secondhand domino.

[pope]

Nice! That's where I'm headed I think.

I like your mentality. I've always thought that there are Heads, Hearts, and Tails, and a finished product is a mix of some of all three, just some or most of the heads and tails are left out. I've taken up your practice of one feints jug though, it's made the shop a lot less cluttered. With reflux it's all just ethanol anyway.

[The Baker]

Thanks, NZChris, I will try a domino in the feints run.

Geoff

[Twisted Brick]

Rather than basing cut decisions on tastings of individual jars, I recommend making up a tasting sample from your obvious hearts jars, then adding to it from jars from either end until you find which jars are one too far. Just because a jar tastes a bit strong of something on it's own, doesn't mean that it's flavor isn't a valuable addition to the flavors in the final blend.

Exactly. With my very first bourbon, (which came out great) I would drop 10ml of center-cut hearts into a glen cairn glass and randomly drop 2-3ml from 5 or 6 jars on either end, dilute it all to 47% drinking strength, sip on it till it was gone and make notes. The next night I would vary the combinations of heads and/or tails jars, eventually finding not only the edges, but how the absence of what you might call early tails can change the profile of the whiskey dramatically.

I know a lot of stillers work their way from the center out till they find their objectionable-tasting jars, but for me (and my still) I find a jar almost half-way through the tails I keep that tastes like sh*t, and omit it accordingly.

[ChemMan]

I have seen the SAME thing. Often regardless of method.....first or second "early" tail cut gets dumped or recycled, while jars 3-7 have some very positive attribute. To me when thinking about how the columns run, when we are in "HEADS" things are stable and energy in equal rate of distillation, etc. when we near the end, boiling point temps raise taking some extra energy AWAY from boil-up in what every column/pipe your using...this is a unstable point....that leads to this. Also the "boiling" point of the flavors are in this equation.

The last item that makes sense to me, is that it really also more about the Latent heat of vaporization. or a BIG technical term for amount of energy needed to change the "state" of a liquid to a GAS. water/Steam is one of the highest of like ANYTHING in the world....its way we heat with STEAM, as it carries a LOT of energy, roughly 1,000 BTU's per lb-Mole (steam tables), while Alcohols are like 300... So think of it as it is 3X harder or more energy to boil water verse ethanol. So when things are changing and the amount of water coming off the column is increasing..the "rate" decreases as more and more water is taking more and more energy....to come over.

Have people noticed as you run tails you need to turn the heat up...this is NOT due to the higher temps, it is due to MORE energy needed for water to come over. every clean with water...and the condenser struggles...same idea...

I personally think there is a LOT to this and the "math" behind proper cuts, energy into a still, etc. It also GREATLY effects the reflux ratio or amount of reflux that is occurring..

Regardless of my GEEK statements above, I see the same thing....and I'm starting to think the "flavor" compounds have even a LOWER level of energy needed to make them a vapor...and the "escape" the still EARLY on in the tails.... And maybe some do and some don't

Cheers.

[pope]

Totally. I love electric for that reason (and many others), I know I can set the amps for a given portion of the run, and flow will slow steadily as the amount of energy needed to reproduce the flow rate increases, as the remaining alcohol is depleted. So I can see what you're saying, there's that bump to move out (in terms of energy input) from amps for hearts removal to the amps for the beginning of tails (whether they're included in the final spirit or not, the 'turn to tails' perhaps), usually an increase for me, for example, from around 8-9 amps to as much as 12 amps. And yes, you'll end up with increasing reflux as you approach tails (until you adjust your heat input) since more will be occurring as the flow slows, right? Maybe I need to start switching jars when I bump the amps, and start marking that down to look for a qualitative correlation.

I think math and charting cuts is totally doable once you've made preliminary subjective cuts on the same recipe/process/still/thermometer/etc, I think repeatability has huge potential so you can 'tune' your cuts for a given recipe and skip the jars on future runs. But I don't repeat much, I'm always trying something new.

[NZChris]

I usually don't bother to bump the amps until my nose tells me I definitely have gotten a tails jar, then I switch it to the maximum and run it out. Sometimes I don't use the controller at all, running the two elements in series until an obvious tails jar, then switching to one element to run it out.

[pope]

I try to do it incrementally to maintain consistent flow rate, there is usually a bigger bump at the end, which corresponds with some temp points I watch. It’s not necessarily where I make my cut but I notice the increase in heat required to maintain flow rate.

[NZChris]

I do that if I'm in a hurry to go to the pub.

[8Ball]

I’ll probably catch hell for this, but, what seems to work for me is to use a parrot and collect Somewhere between 76% to 60%, then air this out a day or two, then temper it down to aging strength with distilled water. The heads & tails get recycled into the next runs.

I’ve tried to collect in jars, but with my small 5G copper pot & liebig rig, it just doesn’t seem to work. Also, I try to collect enough so that I don’t have to temper with water and dilute flavor, but that usually means I go way too deep into tails for my taste.

I do a lot of little tastes as I approach the heart to tail transition, and for me, I know to switch to feints when the taste goes from ‘beer to bitter.’ On my rig, this usually occurs between 194-198F at the top of the column.

I age in a white oak cask and in also in glass with loose lids for at least a year or two. While I know I could do better, and I do try to do better each time, what I’ve produced do far suits me and others just fine. I love this hobby.

[NZChris]

You're a lot cleverer than I am 8Ball. I can't cut on the fly. I also can't continually recycle my feints into my next strips without eventually getting smaller heart cuts and making bulk feints every run.

[8Ball]

You're a lot cleverer than I am 8Ball. I can't cut on the fly. I also can't continually recycle my feints into my next strips without eventually getting smaller heart cuts and making bulk feints every run.

No, would never say cleverer, just admitting my own limitations. I think that my set up forces me to make narrow heart cuts, and with a 5G pot, that means I get a lot of smearing if I don’t. So I wind up with a lot of feints.

For example, Just did a all grain spirit with 3G low wines at 35% and 1G fresh fermented at 8.5%, the total charge was ~ 28%. The result was 88 oz Hearts around 72%, tempered down to 62.5%, for a final aging quantity of 100 ounces. I also wound up with 2.5L of feints at 51% from this run.

It is a 5G copper pot with a 2” riser x 14” and a liebig condenser x 36”. I use one scrubber only in the bottom.