How do you decide when to blend feints?

[Steve Broady]

This is for the folks who either add feints into a fresh run, or who like to make an all feints run. How do you decide whether one particular batch of feints is right to add? Do you judge it by the character of the hearts cut that it is associated with? Taste the feints and judge them on their own? Or just figure that it fits in a given category/recipe, so in it goes?

The reason I’m asking is that I have some feints from an apple brandy which I mildly scorched. I ended up running the brandy anyway, and I’ve found that the scorch is adding a scotch-like quality to the brandy which is interesting and not unpleasant. I have no intention of trying to duplicate that, and I’m not sure I want that flavor in more brandy going forward because I really want the fruit to shine more.

That leaves me with these feints and no clear idea of what to do with them. In theory, I could try just running them on their own and pulling a tiny bit more out, but that seems a bit pointless. I was considering adding them into a whiskey, possibly an all feints run, with the thought that it might give a very subtle scotch-like character to the resulting whiskey. I’ve done that with a batch of whiskey which I scorched, adding it to a bunch of samples of scotch which I didn’t care for and re-running the whole thing, making a “scotch” which I like far better than any of the things that went in.

Another option could be to just use it in a sac run, since I have another boiler under construction, but I’d hate to waste something special. I just don’t know how to decide if it’s special in a good way or special in an eating paste kind of way.

I’m not asking to be told what to do. I’d just like to hear the opinions/practices of those who’ve been there. Have you ever had a unique, unusual, or questionable batch of feints and had to decide how best to use it, if at all? And of course, if you have an opinion or advice on my specific situation, I’m happy to hear it.