Thank you for clearing things out! Still reading on the subject and as you, I think it will be wise to take the forceful pot still approach, and be picky with my cuts. 10kgs of 35ppm malt, 4kg of 50ppm malt. Found some cobra scottish whiskey yeast with enzymes that breaks the last CH's in the fermenter. loads of water, I would rather try to get as low as i can on the water side, but I know its quite a stretch to go below 3liters per kilo malt. In the past I brew AG Beers, quite a lot, spirits is when the time gives me an opportunity (God it takes time!)Hi LordL. To start with, I’m not an expert so consider the source of this answer.
In the original batch that I fucked up, I added one liter of sweet water to eight liters of spirit that made my cut.
A few things led to my F up. First, I was taking a little wider tails cuts than normal. Lots of what I made during that period of time had heavier tails in them as I was learning how wide I could go and still like the spirit. Second, my sweetwater was taken too early in the run, I think. I was still seeing 2% ABV off of the still, and I think I should have run it down further, maybe 0%, before using that water. This is just speculation on my part, because I have not tried this a second time (yet).
I have made whiskey with a small amount of packing and some reflux. I don’t recall any issues with that, but I decided at some point just to stick with pot stilling for my whiskey and rum. I don’t do nearly as many batches as I used to, so now I focus on what I have proven to work well for me with more predictable results. That said, If you have a serious tails problem with a batch a little reflux and packing will help you get more good stuff out of it.
Best of luck. Let me know what you end up doing and how it turns out.
Otis
Will strip hard and to the 0.1% ~ish mark and then try to be brave and try to go as hard as I can on the spirit run as well. Me thinking that an empty column still isn't a pot still onion.. if it gets to smeared up, i'll just do "an Otis" and redestill the "bad jars" more slowly. Hoping to get those phenols over to the other side without to much of the bad stuff..
I'll keep you posted!