Cuts ideas for maximizing flavor

[Honest_Liberty]

Greetings everyone,

I've been about 18 months since I've been able to run the still. Marriage, baby, building a cabin, long hours at work etc. So I have had time to tinker with aging. I have some feignts on oak now going on 2 years just because I wanted to see what happens. It is obviously dirty, but it smells and tastes way closer to store bought bourbons.

What I've noticed is that when I age super clean spirits with tight cuts, I get a muted, over oaked and simple spirit. The oak never seems to balance out to the levels I've read from the masters on here, even after 18 months with the appropriate surface area. I can't explain it but it is underwhelming and boring. My Corn+SF recipe and regular SF recipe is fantastic white, but marginal aged. Same for my high rye COB mix.

My thought is that I need to allow a bit of a smeared heads cut and a bit of the tails to really create a fine whiskey that people will recognize as such, because what I'm making tastes nothing like that.

Has anyone found that slightly loose cuts result in a more balanced, complex aged spirit?

[8Ball]

I use multiple generations of backset & dunder, strip out everything until it gets cloudy, then spirit run making pretty wide cuts based on taste, then try to age as long as I can. My cuts usually fall in the 78%-58% spread of the spirit runs. Sometimes I add a little fresh fermented wash or mash in with the spirit run too. I recycle the heads & tails as well. YMMV.

[jonnys_spirit]

I’ve started cutting much wider with wider tails than heads and I also take a heart of the hearts cut for my best white - this from my whiskey and bourbon runs. I’ll save some infected backset and feints to top up the spirit run and also re-use backset in the mash regularly. Chuck the early early heads and late late tails.

When I do a grappa I’ve started keeping backset for next season as well as mixing my feints with the used pomace and macerating till next season. Press and add that to the spirit run also. I

Cheers!
-jonny

[NZChris]

I reckon 'Cut' is the wrong word to use at hobby scale and that it can fool you into making mistakes. Think of 'Cut' as 'Choosing a Blend'. Usually, jars outside the obvious hearts taste a bit nasty on their own, but are needed in the blend if you are aiming to get fuller flavor. Using a small dipper made out of a bent spoon, I start by making up a sample of the obvious hearts at roughly 35%, taste that, then alternately add to it from jars from each end until I'm sure that I have identified the jars that are one too far.

You don't have to only choose one blend out of each run. I made narrow and wide cut rums yesterday. I have done three different cuts from one spirit run.

You don't have to oak everything. One of my favorite drinks is young, narrow cut, white dog UJSSM. I enjoy it more than it's wide cut oaked and aged bretheren and I'm leaving more of it white each time I make it because it's the white that I keep running out of.

[Odin]

Smearing in heads and tails creates longer aging and more complexities. Please realize close to 80% of flavors can be found where heads and tails smear into hearts. Hearts themselves - as a rule of thumb - correlate to only 20% of flavor. "Cutting" simply means going from one fraction to another, when the desired levels of heads and/or tails smearing have been achieved. Clean cuts are nice for vodka or product that needs to be released (consumed?) quickly.

Regards, Odin.

[still_stirrin]

Ahhh....the “art of the blend”. Therein lies the secrets of success. But you shouldn’t measure yourself beside the “commercial” whiskies (unless it’s truely “top shelf”). Think of the blend as the paint brushes to a future masterpiece...what you can create. And, remember that they all require time to get to that destination.

Be creative...add a touch of late heads for esters, but be gentle as those can “kick your head”. Add a little of the rich grain flavor from the late hearts and early tails. And restore a little sweetness with the sweet water at the end of the tails (after the cloud disappears). And of course, experiment with your toast and char levels to give the color and complexity back to the whiskey. What you do with the blend matters too...aging is a key ingredient.
ss

[Odin]

The way I smear and do cuts is maybe by doing factions in different collection cups the first time, then blend. But not really mixing. More like establishing what's in and what's outside the hearts cut. The factions are marked with temperatures, and I then calculate these as future cut points, so I can distill the same product automatically over and over again.

Regards, Odin.

[Bushman]

I like this thread and it has me thinking!
I collect heads, hearts and tails and the size of the container I collect in has varied depending on where I am in the run. Example larger container when I am in the start of the Heads, middle of the hearts, and end of the tails. When transitioning from hearts to tails I collect in smaller containers. Then during the cuts I determine what I want to blend. What I have never done but might be a good idea is to measure the amount I add to get a more consistent product.
There are still a lot of variables that will alter the results but what I haven’t done in the past is put part of a small jar of say tails into my hearts and then taste to see if more should be added since early tails are already collected in small amounts.

[cayars]

Something I'll add. If you aren't sure about how tight or loose to make the cuts and know it's going to age for a year or more go a bit wider than you normally would.

If in doubt and this is useful, is to take the heads and tails (keep separate) and age them separate. Just label them as heads or tails of the same batch so you know what batch they belong to. I might do something like this for a George Washing Rye:
GWR #14 Hearts
GWR #14 Heads
GWR #14 Tails

#14 being the batch number. This allows you to experiment later by mixing back in the heads and tails. Not quite the same as taking wider cuts but close enough and gives you some latitude down the road to blend.

[Bushman]

Something I'll add. If you aren't sure about how tight or loose to make the cuts and know it's going to age for a year or more go a bit wider than you normally would.

If in doubt and this is useful, is to take the heads and tails (keep separate) and age them separate. Just label them as heads or tails of the same batch so you know what batch they belong to. I might do something like this for a George Washing Rye:
GWR #14 Hearts
GWR #14 Heads
GWR #14 Tails

#14 being the batch number. This allows you to experiment later by mixing back in the heads and tails. Not quite the same as taking wider cuts but close enough and gives you some latitude down the road to blend.

Good idea, but I would say you might even choose to blend from different batches but aging them separate if you have the equipment and space could be very helpful later.

[cayars]

For sure. You could do blends many different ways this way.

You could do things "Canadian Style" as well by doing straight grains batches and then blend your grains after the fact back together after they have aged. I've been doing this a bit myself to dial-in recipes.

[jonnys_spirit]

Another thing I’ll do as my fractions air out over a handful of days is to test a couple of the edgier fractions each night. A couple fingers times three or four proofed down. See how I feel in the morning. See how I feel in the evening. I don’t necessarily decide the cuts in one sitting. I’ll get someone else to test the fractions and make some notes too.

As it’s coming off the spout I’ll call it on the fly - then see how well my aim is from the hip...

Me and my girl go out to the local hole every once in a while and order up five or six glasses of bourbon spread out across the bar and have a good time taking some notes....

Cheers!
-jonny

[cayars]

Your lucky your girl will drink straight whiskey. No one I know and not my Wife for sure will do this.
They wouldn't know the difference between a rye or Irish whiskey or the difference it gins. Probably can't taste anything with all the garbage in their glasses.

I used to stop at different watering holes at off times of the day when they weren't busy. I'd tell the bartender I want to taste many different whiskey and if he's do 1/2 or 1/3rd pours I'd appreciate it. Usually about 70% of them would do that. Nice to be able to taste 3 for the price of one. Only problem is that they have nothing new so can't really do that much anymore unless I'm at some different place.

I like to do the off the hip cuts as well and check them later. Pretty easy when you've ran the same recipes over and over but fun when you do something new.

[NZChris]

Another thing I do for fuller flavor is something I don't do. I don't leave the jars airing out for days letting my esters piss off out the shed door like I regularly see recommended on this forum. I see long airing as a useful trick when you're in a hurry to drink it because your liquor cabinet is empty and for finishing neutral.

The strip is important too. If you have to dilute Low Wines to get below 40%, you have discarded a fair bit of flavor with the backset. A great trick when trying to make neutral with a pot still, but not ideal if you want flavored product.

[cayars]

I don't air out for a long time either. I do about 6 hours. If I'm working on a neutral I'll microwave each jar right as it comes off the still to 160 F to help blow off some of the heads I won't want. Then I let those air out for 6 hours or so.

[Honest_Liberty]

you folks are so awesome! Thank you!

this whole time I've really been focused on tight cuts and now I'm going to have to tinker, again, to elevate my game.

[cayars]

Fermenting on grain vs off grain and at different temps. Type of yeast used. Mash bill. Blend/cuts, aging vessel, choice of wood and amount, toast and char levels and so on all change the taste of the finished product. You could play a lifetime with different things on the same "basic mash" to perfect it.

You can even up this doing it like Four Roses who uses two basic recipes but then ferments with 5 different yeasts (different vessels) giving them 10 different taste profiles before anything is ever distilled. They build some complexity up front that other brands won't have (good or bad). https://fourrosesbourbon.com/our-recipes/

[pope]

8Ball summed up everything I'd have said. Also I've taken Chris's advice and stopped airing my jars. I blow on them when I lift the lid, then smell. His advice on stripping your low wines to the total aggregate abv (not what the parrot reads) is sound advice - IMO your goal should be to never add water. If your final spirit is too high abv, go deeper into the low wines next time, or lower your wash abv, that's the only place you need to add water unless you're refluxing neutral or bottling from a barrel.

[Honest_Liberty]

Ok awesome. Yep, I've got 6 gallons of feints aged on oak at 55%. I think I'm just going to keep it as emergency wicket instead of rerunning. It's got some Brandy, Bourbon, and SF stuff in there.

I was tasting my jars at full strength and smelling at full strength, thinking my nose is sufficient. I was once again being lazy. Now I'm done taking shortcuts and going to listen to all of your experienced advice.

It's tough to work this in with my schedule which is why I've taken shortcuts, but no more