Charcoal Filtering

[DoubleJ]

I have a few curiosity questions, if I may, for those in the know about charcoal filtering.

Over the last couple days I've been watching youtube videos and whatnot about making whisky, and stumbled on a few Jack Daniels videos. I was intrigued by the charcoal filtering they do to "convert" their bourbon to Tennessee whisky. In the videos it said they take the new white whisky and filter it through a 10' layer of charcoal. They didn't however make any mention of how they control the heads/hearts/tails of their whisky production.

So how do they do that? Do they ignore it altogether and just pump the whole lot into the charcoal bed? Or is there something inherent in the type of still their running that precludes the heads and tails from their runs?

And then specifically to charcoal filtering, what sort of "flavour" for lack of better words, does it remove from the spirit?

Thanks all.

JJ

[Swedish Pride]

that the one you watched?
I came across that one recently myself, and in the video they don;t show any cuts or mention cuts, but they may well do.

As far as I know filtering removes all flavours if you leave it long enough, haven't got around to try it for myself though.

[der wo]

Charcoal has nothing or only little to do with cuts. At least it has nothing to do with the foreshots and heads cut.
JD and almost all other large american distilleries don't make any cuts. That's where the glue smell is from. Their cntinuous distillation system allows no fores cut, but it is very effective to get all the alcohol in the hearts container . A fores reduction happens in the barrel only. If you want to find out more, search here for continuous distillation. And perhaps watch videos from whisky.com. They visited a few bourbon distilleries too. But not all information you get there is true. But you can see many details like the continuous column and the doubler and the milled grain and scared faces when someone tastes fermented mash or new make... And you can see how the details differ in each distillery (for example Wild Turkey uses coarse milled grain).
Charcoal reduces bad and good tails. The resulting new make has less good and less bad flavors, but the same amount of heads. The taste of Tennesee whisky comes mainly from the wood and the heads. The charcoal they use is not so "pefect" like the charcoal you can buy for spirit or wine polishing. There are still parts with uncharred wood and it is a very sweet wood they use. So probably it also adds some sweet flavor.

[still_stirrin]

+1 to what der wo said regarding Jack Daniels whiskey production.

I toured the distillery last year and confirm that they do NO cuts in their process (maximum alcohol recovery for economic reasons). They indeed run a continuous distillation with the product running into 10 foot tall charcoal tower. The input is sprinkled over the top of the bed (continuously through the run) and collected at the bottom, where it is measured and filled into the barrels. The filter bed takes a while (an hour or more) to drip through. The drip rate is controlled by the input flow rate. It sprinkles through copper pipe grid, not unlike the sparge arm used for homebrewing (lautering). Remember, their charcoal filtering process is "proprietary" to JD.

Jack Daniels makes their charcoal by stacking slats of wood, soaking it is fores and early heads (they do cut some of those out) and ignite it. In the rickyard, they have a large vent hood to arrest sparks, but essentially the fires are in the open air. When they make charcoal, the sky above the distillery turns gray with the smoke and as the moist air soaks the ash out of the air, it falls again on the buildings, leaving a smoky, gray patina on the roof everywhere.

The white whiskey includes heads, hearts, and tails and the smell coming off the still is noticeably "headsy". In fact, I almost got a headache just smelling it. But when the white is run through the charcoal bed, it must reduce the heads somewhat as the distillate that goes into the barrel is not as harsh...still there, but not as aromatic. Perhaps the journey through the 10 foot deep (distillery made) charcoal allows volatiles to outgas sufficiently.

I had the opportunity to sample a "fresh from the cask" seasonal special whiskey and it had a significant heads flavor, although not solvent-like, it had much esters in it. Perhaps a few years in the bottle will help mellow, or reduce that quality.

For us hobbiests, there is no substitute for good cuts. There is no automatic, quick solution for eliminating the fores & heads other than making the proper cuts. And our whiskeys are better as a result.

Spend the time and effort learning how to do it. You'll be glad you did.
ss