RevSpaminator wrote:I think you missed the point. You really can't make good cuts based on abv. You need to rely on taste and smell. Don't underestimate the sensitivity of that organic neural network inside your skull.
Yeah you're right. I didn't mean to sound like a dick. I am focusing on ABV as one measurement to help me, not focusing only on it. Although I must say that some of the most influential literature does use ABV as a standard reference - Arroyo for example - and the general acceptance of the "bad" cut from 50% to 38% and then the good rum oils from 38% on to be added back in. I have seen this referenced many times in the forums.
I am having a lot of trouble getting my cuts right, or otherwise I am doing something else wrong. I taste the cuts (after airing) but without a lot of experience, it is very difficult to know what the flavour will translate to 2 months later after aging on oak. I have had a couple of very ordinary batches and although everyone's still is different, I was hoping to get a ballpark idea of the general hearts ABV range. Maybe the variation in people's stills and process makes this irrelevant, I don't know. I was hoping for some general direction like "where I generally commence my hearts cut is after about a 2% drop in ABV", or "my hearts cut is finished before the ABV starts to drop at all and then I keep a later cut with average ABV of x%". For the run I recorded above, I was tasting constantly throughout the first 6 litres and it tasted very rough to me. But people say that the heads flavour ages out quicker than the tails flavour. Now after 1 month on oak, it still takes your breath away a bit when you taste it, yet I feel like I waited for ages for the heads to pass and kept well into the lower ABVs as a consequence. Maybe this ferment was the problem. I find it a lot easier doing cuts on neutral as you know instantly whether the flavour (or lack of) is there.
DAD300 wrote:ABV has nothing to do with fores, heads, and hearts. I can run an entire 13 gallon charge and collect all at 90+% from beginning to end. Eventually tails will get nasty as the ABV drops and then get better...
So DAD you are saying that you collect most hearts at your stabilised initial take off ABV, then ditch some of the cuts and then keep a later cut at a lower ABV - kind of like the Arroyo method of adding the late tails back in? I have tried adding the tails below 37.5% back into my hearts, aging with medium toasted oak dominos and then diluting with purified water and leaving for a week. To me it just tastes like the tails flavour, not the complex rum flavour of fine commercial rums that i'm used to drinking. I realise that aging for years on oak cannot be replicated in a short space of time, but I am no where near the ballpark flavour even with pure molasses washes so must be doing something wrong. A little bit frustrated...
