Difference between foreshots and heads?

[Boots]

I've read the site, and a copule of posts on this topic, but how do you tell the difference between "true foreshots" and heads? I've read that you can re-distill the heads and tails, but assuming you are chucking everything before 170 degrees (whisky), isn;t that all foreshots? Or is it that you chuck the 1st 100 ml per 5L wash, period, and then save everything after that but before 170 degrees as heads?
Thanks

[Uncle Remus]

What I call true foreshots is anything that comes off before 172 deg f. Depending on the wash of coarse, I've had some stuff come of at around 125 deg. I do take a little more for good measure even after the temp reaches 172... about 50 mls per 25 litres of wash.

[Hackers]

Or is it that you chuck the 1st 100 ml per 5L wash, period, and then save everything after that but before 170 degrees as heads?
Thanks

Rather than "chuck" the heads you might want to keep in in a bottle maked POISON as it makes a good cleaner, or starter fuel for an outdoor BBQ (not a gas BBQ of course ). After all it is basically metholated spirits.

[Boots]

I dig what you are saying, Remus, but I thought that after 170, or in your case 172, everything was good to be drunk. Where do the heads come in, or is it that at around that temp (170-180 or so), you can drink it but it's better to re-distill. That's what is confusing to me, seems like there really isn;t any difference between foreshots and heads.

[Uncle Remus]

Foreshots (that come off at low temp) contian higher concentrates of methanol, acetone and othere low volitials. You want to get rid of these, put em in your Coleman lamp or use them for cleaning solvent.

Heads on the other hand are mostly ethanol, but there are still traces of nasties mixed in. You can tell by the smell, that 1st half litre of so after the temp hits 172% will smell solventy, rub it on your hands and it will dry very quickly, smell your hands after. After the heads portion of the run, your distillate will smell more neutral with hints of grain or fruit or whatever your mash is made with. If you drank straight heads you'ld probably have a wicked hangover, but it wouldn't kill you of make you go blind. Making the heads cut is a quality control thing, if you have doubts when the heads phase is over, take a little more, the end product will be better for it.

Heads you can recycle and get a lot of ethanol back. Save them up along with your tails and do a seperate run one day when you've collected a sufficient amount. Or you can simple put em back in your next wash when you charge your still.

[Boots]

Gotcha, thanks for the explanation, I will do some smell/touch/taste testing on the early parts of the run.

[Watershed]

With my pot still there's a brief pause between the first few drops ( about 5ml from a 5l wash ) that come through and the main body of liquid. I count that as my foreshots, it usualy smells like glue. I'll then discard the next 10- 40ml that comes off based entirely on smell & taste.

I keep the front end discard to fuel my meths burner for jewellery work.

[Boots]

Cool. And just for knowledge's sake, is the ratio of discarded liquid (100ml per 5L wash) a set thing, so that if I was doing a 1L wash, I would only be discarding 20ml, or is it the 1st 100ml period? In my test runs, I don't want to waste everything in case I fuck up, so I was thinking of doing some smaller runs.

[Husker]

The smaller the run, the more percentage you will get of waste.

If you run a 1000L batch in a 1100L boiler, you will NOT have to discard 20L of foreshots. Possibly 2L to 4L or so, and that would depend upon the ingredients of your mash, since some recipes naturally create more bad nasties. If you did 200 runs of 5L each (using this same mash), you WOULD end up with 20L of foreshots (or more), and all that additional waste. You would have to do this, because any less, might not be enough. If you went smaller than that, (say 1L as you are talking about), then you again would end up with a much larger amount than just 20L, because again, are you SURE you are ridding your run of the stuff you REALLY do not want to drink?

Also, I believe the 100mL / 5L "rule" was built for people running 40-50L at a time in a keg (at least the people I have heard talk of this rule use keg boilers). So for a 5L (or 1L) boil, this may actually not be enough.

Same goes for the head (and tails). The smaller the boiler, the more containinated product you will have to pull out as being heady, before getting into a good product run. Also, the product run will start smelling taily earlier on a smaller run, so your main run gets cut shorter and shorter.

This is one of the reasons why many on these boards run a larger batch and have a larger boiler for their stills. The common 15.5 gallon stainless steel sankey keg is what many people use as a low cost, but very usable boiler. With a larger boiler, your "body" run will be a larger percentage possible ethanol locked inside that mash.

H.

[Boots]

Thanks, defnitely a good argument for me getting myself a bigger boiler as soon as I can.

[copperhead]

I really think i would start a littel bigger than 1L. i'v never tryed to run something this small but it just seems that its going to be hard to seperate anything from a still this small. like i say never tryed. will you get a shot glass full of good stuff?

[Boots]

Maybe I mean more than a liter, I'm not used to the metric system. My tea-kettle, until I can get around to making a bigger boiler, is a 3 quart version, and I plan to do multiple runs of 2 quarts per run, which I think calculates to around 2 liters a time.

[Husker]

At the current time, all I have is a water distiller with a 4L boiler. This simply is not big enough to actually get any "good" body out of it (or at least much good body).

I have learned that if you do quick "stripping runs" where you simply pull off (almost) all of the ethanol, and do not care about head / tail / foreshot cuts. Then do this enough to get a FULL pot again, but this is a much higher ABV level. Then when running this, try to make "cuts". Then do this several times (stripping to several runs get a full pot, then re-run that higher ABV into "cuts"). I do this until I get enough 2nd run "bodies", to make a full boiler again, then do this again (cutting foreshots, heads, body tails). Doing this I have gotten some drinkable spirits. However, this takes a heck of a long time.

I would much rather have a larger still, dump in 10 gallons of wash, run it fast to strip. Then do that with a 2nd batch (10 gallons, and strip). You will end up with about 6 gallons of higher ABV low wines, and then simply run this 6 gallons one time, carefully, either by full reflux for a neutral, or by careful pot distillation for a more flavorful rum/whiskey/brandy/whatever. In this run, you pay very careful attension to heat, reflux (if doing reflux), cooling, and cuts. In the end, the quality of this larger still will be head and sholders above the quality of doing this (or trying to) with a small pot still. And as a bonus, it will take a heck of a lot less time.

H.

[Boots]

I definitely don't have the space for a 10 gallon boiler, unfortunately. The stripping run method sounds like a ton of work. I may have to muddle through this by experimentation, hopefully in the next few weeks I can get my hand on a bigger boiler.

[Husker]

Boots
I definitely don't have the space for a 10 gallon boiler, unfortunately. The stripping run method sounds like a ton of work. I may have to muddle through this by experimentation, hopefully in the next few weeks I can get my hand on a bigger boiler.

With a pot still, (and a small one at that), about the only way you are going to get quality is to strip run to get the low wines (reduces the volume to about 1/3 what you started with, and triples the ABV, and captures "most" of the ethanol, possibly 90%), and then trying to increase the purity / quality by multiple distillations with cuts as good as you can. Keep in mind that with each "run" you are only going to capture at most 90% of the ethanol (and when you start making cuts you are removing much more than that), so your volume of final product will continue to be reduced, the more you try to get the product tasting / smelling better. That is the trade off you are going to pay.

For some kinds of spirits (whiskey, rum, brandy), you probably can get some acceptable product, but do expect to put in some time working to get an acceptable result.

H.

[Tater]

[/quote]

With a pot still, (and a small one at that), about the only way you are going to get quality is to strip run to get the low wines (reduces the volume to about 1/3 what you started with, and triples the ABV, and captures "most" of the ethanol, possibly 90%), and then trying to increase the purity / quality by multiple distillations with cuts as good as you can. Keep in mind that with each "run" you are only going to capture at most 90% of the ethanol (and when you start making cuts you are removing much more than that), so your volume of final product will continue to be reduced, the more you try to get the product tasting / smelling better. That is the trade off you are going to pay.

For some kinds of spirits (whiskey, rum, brandy), you probably can get some acceptable product, but do expect to put in some time working to get an acceptable result.

H.[/quote]I mostly do single runs with my pot still and product comes out fine.Make a good wash . Learn to make good cuts and your likker will be good.Unless your your doing low abv washes and need to get proof up. Double running or triple running is unnessary.Remember every time ya run it proof goes up taste goes down.Try it both ways and what ever taste best to you is way to go,