cutting your HOOCH to 40+%

[thelegion]

I have read many a post on cutting your distillate down and everything I read I hear mix your water with alcohol, key word being "water" . I read an article on another site on cutting your spirits down and the main reason for clouding seems to be adding water to your spirits, it was explained that there is some thermal dynamics going on here and the way avoid this is to "slowly" ad your "alcohol" to your desired water. A gradual introduction of the spirit (with stirring slowly) will stop the clouding effect, I believe it was also mentioned to have both materials at or close to the same temperature.

So,not knowing this I went to cut my first real bottle of spirits the other day and added the water to the alcohol and ended up with a cloudy product. After a bit of research I found the above information and low and behold no clouding occurred on the second attempt.

So what is the general consensus here among the seasoned veterans, water/alcohol or alcohol/water, or are there any other techniques to avoid this.


thanks, TL....