Continuous distillation - Armagnac vs. accepted wisdom?

[dragonfrog]

The received wisdom around here seems to be that continuous distillation is only good for wash stripping, since the output ends up with all the heads and tails left in, unless you have an extremely high-end still with the means to continously separate fractions.

To a certain extent, I guess you could control the tails cut by the rate at which you introduce the wash - the faster it comes in, the less thoroughly the wash is stripped by the time it's discarded, and the more tails are left in the spent wash. But there's just no making a heads cut.

Given all that, I'd been wondering for a while about Armagnac brandy, as it's single-distilled in a simple continuous still, with no rectification column to remove the heads. (see e.g. http://www.copper-alembic.com/products_ ... &cat_id=13" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow). So, how could it be a highly regarded brandy, if it's full of heads and tails?

And now, I've found these results of some gas chromatography comparing the composition of Armagnac (single continuous distilled) with Cognac (double batch distilled, with the standard cuts we'd expect). The upshot is, on average Armagnac actually has slightly less methanol than Cognac (though the difference is slight - the means are within 1/4 standard deviation of each other). This completely contradicts what I would have expected.

http://books.google.com/books?id=0aWR3f ... &lpg=PA219" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

So what's going on here? Maybe someone with experience running a continuous still and/or distilling wines could weigh in...

It doesn't help that I've never tasted Armagnac brandy - can anyone comment on the extent of heads-y and/or tails-y taste it might have?

[manu de hanoi]

very few hobbyists use continuous stripper and none (except me) I believe is doing continuous cuts. It's a matter of convenience not Wisdom. However the practice is widespread in the industry. try searching the forum about continuous cuts/rectifications/heads tails etc....

[rad14701]

Brandy has historically been a cordial which is intended to be sipped in small quantities and as such would be acceptable to have extra heads and tails left in the final product... Anyone who has banged down several snifters of brandy has most likely learned moderation the hard way... Most of the members here attempt to remove as much of the heads and tails as possible, leaving only enough congener's in the final spirits to mildly augment flavor characteristics... It's just not practical to use a continuous still for our purposes, especially if we are striving for clean spirits... We are not commercial producers who are concerned with bottom line profit margins at the expense of consumer headaches...

The term "Home Distiller" pretty much says it all... It's not about wisdom, whether accepted or otherwise...

Think of it this way... If you have, let's say, a 25 liter pot still it's fairly obvious that you will be doing batch runs which limit your spirit production (for lack of a better word)... However, if you have a continuous distillation unit then it is anyones guess as to the volume of spirits you may be able to produce or are actively producing... The whole rationale behind "intent" becomes more clearly defined with batch distillation versus continuous... Once "illegal production" starts looking more like an "illegal enterprise" then you are no longer falling under the guise of being a "home distiller" enjoying his or her "hobby"... Don't compare "commercial" to "hobby"...

Multiple facets with multiple potential interpretations...