Whats the deal with this water thing?

[Colonel Reb]

First of all, great site everyone...been reading here and homedistiller.org for several months now but have a couple of questions that need clarification...

Whats the difference between the hard and soft water? Why is one better than the other? For the regular joe in anytown USA like me, whats my options on water to use?


Next question, having not made a run yet I'm confused by the foreshots, heads, middle, and tails segments and how you are supposed to blend them together to get the right mixture? Why blend them? Why not collect together (minus the foreshots of course)?

[junkyard dawg]

If you want to drink your alcohol then you want to keep those cuts seperate. They taste different, some of them pretty bad, and some pretty bad for you. Don't think that those cuts that you can't drink right away are wasted tho, adding them back into other runs and redistilling them means you can collect them later.

Hard water has all the minerals in it. Soft has those removed. I think the yeast can use some mineral content, and if you make whiskey then pure limestone spring water is a traditional ingredient.