Understanding Heads

[WhiteLikker]

Hi Everyone!

I posed this question in the welcome thread and was advised to put it here:

My goal is to get good at eau de vie and I still have some learning to do. I am guilty of using added sugar. But, the sugar bite is not my main concern. It is the excessive amount of heads and I don't want to go through the expense and effort to do an all fruit w/o sugar before understanding what's going on.

So, this is where I'm at:

At first, I thought that I got more heads with fruit than with All Bran because fruit has more methanol and methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol so the methanol should be in the heads. I'm now convinced this is wrong.

According to: http://ec.europa.eu/research/agricultur ... _fruit.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow , it is true that methanol boils lower than ethanol. But, methanol is more polar than ethanol and thus sticks to water much more than ethanol. As a result, the methanol to ethanol ratio is actually highest in the tails. (They present lots of data in this paper.) Paulinka also gives a good discussion of methanol and heads here: http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 38&t=54425 . The conclusion seems to be that methanol is a red herring. Everyone makes a big fuss about it. But, it is not the issue.

So, why do I get so much heads with fruit? If it was an issue with my equipment or hygiene or similar, why is my All Bran turning out fine? Also, it is well known that fruit makes more heads and especially high pectin fruits, such as apple. There must be a connection between the pectin/methanol and the heads, even if it is not as simple as what I originally thought. Are the components in the heads a product of pectin/methanol? What can we do to minimize the formation of this product?

Cheers!
White