Zymurgy Bob's Making The Cuts

Zymurgy Bob's Distillation Facts
Making the Cuts
If your distillation was careful and without mistakes, it's making the cuts that
will determine whether you're making rotgut or fine spirits. This is the part
where you decide which of the fractions you took from a spirit run you will
save, blend and dilute to drinking or aging strength. The fractions you do not
save for drinking may or may not be used in future distillations, but we'll keep
them anyway, just in case.
As we discussed earlier making the cuts is based on the fact that the output of
the still is constantly changing, both in alcohol content and in flavor. When you
divided the still output into pints, you took the first step in making the cuts.
The next step is to smell and taste each of those jars you collected, and choose
those which taste good, or, for some, those which do not taste bad.
Foreshots
Basically, here's what you need to know to start making your keep/don't keep
decisions: At the very start of a pot still run, the first distillate to come out has
lots of harsh-tasting and bad-smelling compounds in it, compounds like
acetone (fingernail polish remover), ethyl acetate, and acetaldehyde, along
with some other nasties. Although this mixture is not toxic enough to make
you sick, after you've smelled it, you just know you don't want any of this in
your carefully-crafted spirit (or your mouth!), so you'll either throw this stuff
away or use it for starting charcoal fires or removing magic marker stains. We
call this fraction foreshots.
Heads
After the foreshots, the spirits start smelling much better, but there is still a harshness
reminiscent of cheap whiskey. In fact, after your distilling experience, you'll be able to
taste this fraction in commercial spirits, especially the cheap ones. Getting you to drink
this stuff is how the distillers make money. Yes, the objectionable part of this fraction
contains those same nasty compound as the foreshots, but due to the fact that potstill
output is continually changing, it's far less objectionable. It will give you hangovers like
much commercial spirits, something you'll experience much less with home-made spirits.
This fraction is called heads.
Hearts
As the still run progresses and the distillate keeps changing, the compounds that had
seemed so harsh in the foreshots and heads gradually decrease in concentration. If
you've ever held a handful of fresh dark-roasted coffee beans to your nose and smelled
that rich dark aroma, with just a trace of what makes skunks awful, you know that
substances that can be repellent in strength, can also be delightful complexity in trace
amounts. And that's exactly what happens to the still's output. Gradually that distillate
becomes smooth and soft, and ghosts of delicate flavors caress your palate. When the
distillate makes your eyes wide and your voice drop half an octave, the fraction is
hearts, and this is what you want to save.
Tails
If you're lucky, the still will keep cranking out hearts for a long time, even though you
may detect small changes in flavor, but the hearts will be smooth and lovely, for a while
anyway. At some point, however, you'll detect a hint of something different happening.
You may taste some nice flavors that you'd like to keep, but just a trace of something
just a bit off will creep into your hearts. It won't be something harsh and sharp like the
foreshots tastes, but rather a bit of mustiness, described by some (me included) as "wet
cardboard". At the same time, if you are tasting directly at the still, you'll be aware that
your distillate is losing its alcoholic burn, as in fact it now has less alcohol in it. What's
coming out of your still now is tails.
Starting the Cuts in the Middle
Because it's easier to detect flaws in the distillate after you've been tasting
good hearts, instead of the other way around, we start testing and tasting a
fraction that was collected in the middle of the still run. This middle fraction will
almost certainly be pure hearts. Let's say we have collected 15 pint vessels;
we would then select pint #7 to test and taste first. Having tasted nice clean
spirit, we'd then taste #6 and see if some flaws had crept into that fraction.
Next test #8 for the same reason, and then continue on with #5,#9,#4,#10
and so on.
Diluting to a Standard %ABV (Alcohol by Volume)

Because the %ABV of the distillate gets lower as the still run progresses, #6
and #8 may both be good hearts, but #6 will have a higher %ABV than #8,
and the apparent "heat" of the additional alcohol in #6 can confuse the
comparison. For that reason, and the fact that the high %ABV of early fractions
can stun our taste buds, we'll dilute a bit of every fraction to a standard %ABV
before tasting; 35 %ABV (70 proof) is a good choice.
Since we can read both the beginning and ending %ABV from the collection jar
label, a simple average gets us close enough to the actual %ABV of any
collection jar. If we take a small sample of known volume, of a known %ABV
from that collection jar, we can use the Booze Blender's Formula. If...
a is amount of liquor to be blended (any units)

b is amount of water to be added (same units)
O is original %ABV
F is final desired %ABV
... then the Booze Blender's Formula is b=a(O-F)/F
For the sake of example, if I take 10 ml (milliliters, measured by a drugstore

syringe) of distillate that is 54 %ABV, and I want to dilute that to a 35 %ABV
sample, I would first subtract 35 from 54 and get 19, so (O-F)=(54-35)=19. I
would them multiply that 19 by the 10 ml of original distillate volume, and get
190, so a(O-F)=10(54-35)=190. Finally, I'd then divide that 190 by the desired
final %ABV (35) and get about 5.4 ml of water to add to that original 10 ml of
54 %ABV to get the desired 35 %ABV test strength.
Just to be safe, buy a gallon of distilled water at your grocery to do all diluting;
tap water can often throw a test way off.
Because your sense of smell is so important in making the cuts, I used brandy
snifters, or large-bowled wine glasses to test each sample. That way you can
swirl the glass to see the "legs" of the liquor, and you can then get your nose in
the bowl to take a big sniff, and finally a slurpy sip to get plenty of vapor over
your tongue. You won't need or want much more than a teaspoonful or two of
liquor in your glass, so dilute an amount of distillate appropriate to the number
of tasters you have. After each sample tasting, rinse out your glass and your
mouth with distilled water.
When you taste to make the cuts, record your finding and opinions on paper.
The first time you do this you will not have some of the flavors in memory yet,
but just write what you perceive.
Congratulations! You've just made the cuts on your first batch.

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Zymurgy Bob's Distillation Facts

Making the Cuts

Diluting to a Standard %ABV (Alcohol by Volume)

a is amount of liquor to be blended (any units)

... then the Booze Blender's Formula is b=a(O-F)/F

For the sake of example, if I take 10 ml (milliliters, measured by a drugstore

Congratulations! You've just made the cuts on your first batch.

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