Age then blend; or Blend then age?

[Bobdoe]

Folks, my interests are in all grain products and I am just starting out. When I read about blending , like tails with hearts, or heads with hearts, or some combinations of this, I do not find any information regarding if the ideal final drink is one consisting of the blend that has been aged, or aged cuts that have been blended. I have a feeling that this is a very complicated issue!

Thanks all,

Bobdoe

[FullySilenced]

Is done both ways in the industry...

Which is better... to each his own... Captainshooch has this as work in progress now

[Bobdoe]

Thanks for the quick reply! Each prep is an experiment!
BD

[Bushman]

I do a combination as I have both 4 and 2 gallon Mason jars I blend my runs together after cuts and age with JD chips or my own chips from a fruit tree. The cuts are made down to my aging abv then once the jars are filled with multiple runs I barrel age it. When the aging is done to my liking I then make my final cuts to around 43% and bottle.

[skow69]

You must have a lot of barrels.

[Bushman]

skow, I have three 5 gallon barrels and use the solera method to help the process. I sometimes kickstart it with my Ultrasound before adding it to the jars. I am not always making whiskey so some of my time is spent on other recipes for neutrals. I also have a micro distillery that is going to sell me a couple 10 gallon barrels that he has used once. My problem is that I quit distilling for a while to let my stock drop down to a hobby level and am just now starting back up.

PS: To the OP, take your time as you will be surprised how quickly it starts to add up even with you drinking from time to time!

[S-Cackalacky]

Most times I do a few stripping runs and then combine them for a single spirit run. I blend the chosen cuts and age them in a 1 gallon pickle jar after 3 cycles of nuking. The only time I really vary from this is when I make brandy. I do single runs for brandy with a thumper attached. I collect as I would a spirit run, select the desired cuts, blend for each run, and then combine the blended cuts from each run and nuke and age as usual.

There are probably as many methods of blending and aging as there are members on this forum. The goal is to satisfy your own taste. The knowledge base found here allows you to pick and choose the methods/techniques that work best for you and even develop your own.

[skow69]

I blend the cuts from each spirit run immediately after a day or two for airing, then age the blended spirit. I think the logistics of keeping the different fractions isolated and identified by batch and jar number while ageing would overwhelm my organizational skills as well as my collection of storage vessels. So maybe it depends somewhat on how long you plan to age and how many batches you would run in the mean time. Seems like a lot of extra shit to keep track of. Plus if you want to age on oak, you would have a lot of small jars that would need small pieces of oak. And you would eventually end up dumping some of your aged and oaked heads and tails into the feints jug. Naw, no thanks.

EDIT: Yer gonna love all grain!

[Jimbo]

Heads, hearts and tails are blended on distillation day. Very little heads, just enough for some fruit, a little more tails. Keep the rest of your tails seperate from the heads in storage jars. You might be shocked at what you find in them tails jars after a year. If nothing else it will make you feel better about blending in a little tails when you make your cuts, for whiskeys anyway. Not any clean spirits you want to drink right away.

When I read the title of your post I thought you meant blending in the traditional sense. The process above is cutting, or cuts, for me anyway. Blending is mixing different whiskeys together. I do that quite often, and do it after aging. With a bunch of different aged up stuff its a lot of fun to shoot for a flavor by blending the characteristics of different stuff. My 5 Grain started life that way. Batch 303 is another one I blended. Love those 2, might be my favorites these days.

[Bushman]

When I read the title of your post I thought you meant blending in the traditional sense. The process above is cutting, or cuts, for me anyway. Blending is mixing different whiskeys together. I do that quite often, and do it after aging. With a bunch of different aged up stuff its a lot of fun to shoot for a flavor by blending the characteristics of different stuff. My 5 Grain started life that way. Batch 303 is another one I blended. Love those 2, might be my favorites these days.

That is exactly what I was talking about when using the solera method of aging but I sometimes mix during the aging process to fill the barrels.

[Bobdoe]

When I read the title of your post I thought you meant blending in the traditional sense. The process above is cutting, or cuts, for me anyway. Blending is mixing different whiskeys together. I do that quite often, and do it after aging. With a bunch of different aged up stuff its a lot of fun to shoot for a flavor by blending the characteristics of different stuff. My 5 Grain started life that way. Batch 303 is another one I blended. Love those 2, might be my favorites these days.

Ahhh. I understand. I guess I was really asking about mixing the heads/hearts/tails of an individual run. Now I know! Thanks Jimbo and everyone else for the insight.

BD