I spent my weekend running about four gallons of a five-gallon white-wine wash through my potstill for brandy. Since my still is small, I was working roughly one gallon at a time through. From these, I tossed the first 50 ml (bit of a waste of ethanol, but not too bad) and then collected the distillate in two halves. The first half was the higher proof distillate at the earlier part of the run. This I collected until I had about 750 ml each run at 50% alcohol. The rest I collected until the vapor was about 99 C, which averaged out to 1.2 l or so at 20-30% alcohol, which I plan to redistill to a higher proof.
The question I've got is regarding that second distillation. I noticed that the lower-proof collection smells much sweeter and fruitier than the higher-proof collection, no doubt because I cut so deeply into the tails. Am I going to lose that during the second distillation? Also, I have one gallon left of the white-wine wash that I made that needs to run. Should I toss my lower-proof stuff into that during this final run?
Any thoughts on how to get a decent, flavorful brandy is greatly welcomed.
Brandy
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