Can Heads and Tails make Hearts?

[CuWhistle]

I've not been doing this long but it would appear to me that you get out what you put in. In Information Technology it is known as GIGO (garbage in garbage out).

I understand that stripping and then spirit run would allow the production of a larger volume of product. This is assuming that everything is collected in the stripping runs and cuts are only made on the spirit run.

I have done a couple of birdwatcher washes and made cuts keeping the hearts and removing the heads and tails. Today I ran a 30 litre wash and put the collected heads and tails in as well. What I got was the usual level of foreshots, a larger volume of heads, the usual level of hearts and a larger quantity of tails. So it would appear the the heads and tails I put in came out as heads and tails. All it did was use extra energy by taking longer to achieve boil temperature. The good cuts were not significantly, or even noticeably, increased in volume.

What do the gurus say on this matter? I guess the next thing to do is just dilute the collected H & T to 40% and run it separate to see what comes out.

[dakotasnake]

some do that, others just save up the h&t and do an all feints run [ myself included] theres still plenty of good ethenol in the h&t. some add baking soda to the feints a few wks b4 the run. i guess it just depends on what works for you.

[Prairiepiss]

Can heads and tails make hearts? No. But you can retrieve good hearts out of your heads and tails. Depending on how good your still compresses the heads and tails. And also how greedy you were with your cuts.

I make smaller hearts cuts on my first run. Keeping only the best. With the intention of running the feints later for neutral. So I intentionally leave hearts that were a little on the heads or tails side on the line. I then run it in reflux really scrubbing it up to get the best separation I can. And pull the hearts out as clean as I can. When you have feints from 5 or 6 runs? You will have a bigger amount of hearts that can be separated more easily.

[Boda Getta]

I often make runs of all heads and tails in my pot still. I usually only run 1st generation heads and tails and ditch the heads and tails from that run. I make a fairly heavy fore shot cut and collect the rest in pint jars. I also dilute a all heads and tails run more and sometimes go as low 20% ABV. Yes, the run is comprised of what I consider Heads, Hearts and Tails. Some of my best product had resulted from these runs. I've never measured that closely, but I suspect the % of hearts from a all heads and tails would be less than a normal stripped run. For me, being able to get good results from heads and tails runs is a big help to me in not being greedy in making my blends from normal stripped runs. But yes, a all heads and tails run does have hearts, same as with all feints runs or even all heads runs. Never made one, but I would guess an all heads run would have such a narrow hearts portion that its likely it would not be worth the effort.

BG

[CuWhistle]

Well that all makes sense now. I had just assumed that the Ethanol could be distilled out until you had it all, but apparently not, or at least not for drinking anyway. So it is eventually necessary to ditch what is no longer producing palatable gear or your just wasting fuel heating it up over and over with no real benefit.

Should have realised this from reading about the rum oils.

[frozenthunderbolt]

Check out the diagram partway down this page - it will help you understand
http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 15&t=11640

[myles]

Well that all makes sense now. I had just assumed that the Ethanol could be distilled out until you had it all, but apparently not, or at least not for drinking anyway. So it is eventually necessary to ditch what is no longer producing palatable gear or your just wasting fuel heating it up over and over with no real benefit.

Should have realised this from reading about the rum oils.

I am going to say NO to this, but with reservations.

The big producers NEVER ditch anything. The heads and tails always contain some ethanol and you always recover a bit more of it each time you run it. The way they do it after a large number of runs the heads and tails volumes stabilise out to be the same.

I tend to run my pot still derived heads and tails through a column, and the resulting heads and tails from that distilation are so concentrated I do throw those away. From a pot still though they would still contain large proportions of ethanol (no matter how many times they have been through the system) so should not be discarded.
This is based on the feints being added to wash and distilled, as the heads and tails from that distillation will now contain fresh ethanol from the wash. If you do a feints only run in the pot still I would take those heads and tails and send them off to the column for final cleaning.

As for the rum oils, these are also providing flavour components, and I tend to keep all my rum oils for reuse. When I eventually end up with too big a volume they get cycled through the reflux column also. My reflux column is my final stage for extracting useable product - any waste product from the column does get disposed of.