Calvados questions (2)

[Ciderman]

Since you guys were so helpful last time (Thanks Aidas and others), got a few more questions.

Using my 25L potstill, I stripped 100 Litres of 6.5% hard apple cider down to 17 litres of stripped wash (+ a couple of extra 75cl bottles of heads see later). I chucked 200ml of foreshots on each 20l run.

The stripped wash was clear, colourless, and in total 24% ABV

I ran that through again, and collected in a series of sequenced 75cl bottles, collecting until abv dropped below 40%, and collected 6 litres of clear distillated. The first 75cl bottle, right after the (200ml) foreshots, came out at 73%, down to bottle 8 which is 40%. ( I collected another couple of litres, down to 15% afterwards, which I'll keep for running through again). The overall average of the 6 litres I've collected was 62%

I've now put toasted oak chips in to the bottles to start aging, as I did with the couple of first run bottles. The first run stuff has been aging for a week or so and is starting to smell and taste pretty good, I'm pretty pleased with it, so thanks for all your help up to now.

My questions are on the dilution phase :

1) Is it best to do the aging before diluting ?

2) To dilute, would you blend all 8 second run bottles back togther again and then dilute, or still keep the fractions separate. Or would you blend some of the first run stuff I've keep

3) Any other suggestions or somthing I've missed out

Thanks all,

Ciderman