Long time reader, now im ready

[Troyza]

Hi guys
First Up Great site, been a awesome reference for all things stilling.
quick story, iv been brewing beer since 2009 making my way from cans to all grain and hit a level of i know what I'm doing now and Dam this is good. ( I'm my biggest critic ). so after a shoulder surgery and having nothing to do for 8 weeks i decided to put the whisky round the fire "we should make this" comment to practice. with a mate +(8 investors) (and a lot of reading) we made a pretty standard 50l keg and 2' pot set up. after cleaning we completed, two 50L test washes (different grains and yeasts) and aged on some locally sourced oak to see what we liked. fast forward 2 months and a lot of tasting and bang not the greatest but not horrible whisky. Lots of lesson leaned and in the spring we will start the main mission ex bourbon barrel(20L) run. iv also completed a Hook rum 4gen and a thumper build, but have got a head scratching concern about my rum cuts (using what i leaned from the whisky does not seem to transfer as well.?)

Anyhoo
again thanks for all the info

[woodduck]

Welcome mate :greetings-waveyellow:

Sounds like your all over it :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Rum stinks (I'll cop it for saying that :laughing-rolling: ) and is harder to pick the cuts but it is the same process. You just gotta train your nose to shut out the strong smells of rum and detect the sweetness of heads and the slightly off stronger smell of tails. Are you watering your samples to 40% for testing? (Just a small portion of the cuts, I use a shot glass and teaspoon for measuring) Try tasting a well. Experience will be your best teacher. If you get a raging headache in the morning you have too many heads. If you get a funky musty taste you've got too many tails. Well that's how I do it anyway.

All the best :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[bluc]

Look for synthetic sweet fruit flavours(heads) to a fairly neutral spirit(hearts) the neutral side is your hearts. Then from fairly neutral to funk(tails). I normally get two half stubbies of "heading towards funk" on the bubbler that I add to hearts, dont add any heads. On pot still it a whole lot more funk but same principle, i keep first of the off flavoured tails, but in this case only first half stubby usally around 71.5 72 abv..:handgestures-thumbupleft:

[Troyza]

Thanks guys, been thinking of re distilling the rum. from the spirit run which i did 2 of. got 3L Pot run, 7L Thumper run all on glass waiting to see what a mix of 3Lx 5 jars aging on test oak tastes like.. is it ok to drop the oaked stuff back in. and if so in the thumper or the keg? its not like it tastes bad guessing im just a newbie when it comes to aged product.. longest iv waited is 2 months