Home Distiller

This is kinda random but I was just thinking of it so I thought I would poll you guys to see what you would do.

Say you did multiple stripping runs and then your spirit run. Once done if that product wasn't quite up to your standards would you:

A: Treat that product as you would low wines, mix the whole run together, dilute and run again?

B: Make your cuts, separate the heads and tails, then rerun what you think is close?

Just curious on what other might do.

I'd dilute the whole lot and redistill, especially if shooting for flavor instead of neutral spirits...

B - dilute down to 25-30% and rerun ... re-add hearts, tails, very late heads ... I toss my early-mid heads and fores into the campfire fuel container automatically at the start of the run

rad14701 wrote:I'd dilute the whole lot and redistill, especially if shooting for flavor instead of neutral spirits...

So in your method you are using the water to remove the unwanted flavor. I would assume the more you diluted it down the bigger the change?


I've never had to rerun anything yet! But I'll probably try both ways when I do.

I try to stick to recipes where I only have to do one stripping run and then a spirit run. If the spirit run doesn't work out well, I'd have about a 50/50 chance of re-running it again, or throwing it in with my next feints run. Depends how the flavor is doing. If the flavor is something I'm interested in, I'd re-run it. If it doesn't taste how I had hoped, I'd mix it with other stuff like feints.

BoisBlancBoy wrote:

rad14701 wrote:I'd dilute the whole lot and redistill, especially if shooting for flavor instead of neutral spirits...

So in your method you are using the water to remove the unwanted flavor. I would assume the more you diluted it down the bigger the change?


I've never had to rerun anything yet! But I'll probably try both ways when I do.

Yes... I've stated many times in these forums, especially in activated carbon filtering topics, that water is the best filter... Have pot stilled spirits with too much or off flavors, dilute and rerun... Have some almost neutral that has too much bite, from heads, or smell from too much tails, dilute and rerun... When I want really clean neutral spirits and don't want to agonize over a one to two drip per second reflux run I fast strip first and then dilute way down to well under 40%, or whatever gives me a full boiler charge of low wines, and run through the reflux column at a faster take off rate... This yields nice clean neutral due to the extra water acting as a filter...

This same method also works well when pot stilling, beyond what I previously mentioned... If you do several stripping runs and intend to do a spirit run, if you just dilute the combined low wines to 40% and do your spirit run you will most likely need to dilute the blended spirits down to aging strength (60% - 65%)... Using the calculators on the parent site you can dilute down to a specific %ABV and should come very close to your aging strength once your spirits are blended... If you repeat the same recipe often you should eventually have a good idea how far to dilute the low wines to for your intended results... This method will help retain more grain or fruit flavor...

There is another alternative, too. Remember there is a lot of flavor left in the pot. If you don't need to clean it up more, like if you just screwed up with the cuts or blending, toss it back in with the dunder and you get another try at the original wash. Ian Smiley recommends this method for practicing cuts.