How do we separate foreshots, heads, hearts and tails?

over the ball in hops today we're going to talk about a topic it's four shots heads hearts tails heads hearts tails four shots faints if you get my point there's a lot there are so many different opinions about this but I'm going to give you George's explanation and the way I kind of go about it not I'm not necessarily the only one I don't have beat bottom lines right answer I've got a pretty good one but if you read across the internet and vlogs and no matter where you're looking at the information is so confusing I'd like to just break it down and make it as simple as possible and then you develop your own technique in your own process but before we get to that on the on the last video I introduced an idea about using copper in copper pennies that were minted before 1982 so I spent a little bit of time I went down my local bank and I said hey here's a file dollar bill give me ten rolls of pennies and they did and I took the ten rolls of pennies I cleaned them up I put them in a bucket I use a some tarnex and look when you do that it's going to make the room smell a little bit awful it's you know it smells like you know you're dyeing your hair something but does a really great job it cleans everything also you can read the dates I went through painstakingly and I looked at each and every penny and I wound up with a bag of pennies not usable because they were minted in 1982 or after and I wound up with a bag of pennies that were minted prior to 1982 so these are 97.5% copper and you can use these in your column I didn't count these folks what I did was I weighed them though and I found out that 30% of my 10 rolls we're good pennies so there's a copper source for you to start checking the dates on your pennies okay let's get down to the brass tacks here because we have a discussion of foreshots heads hearts tails now depending on what document you go to or what literature you read sometimes you'll find out that four shots aren't even discussed or heads aren't even discussed so it's four shots hearts tails or it's only heads heart tails and in some cases you'll find you'll have four shots faints don't let all of those confuse you here's a way I look at it believe it or not in my opinion four shots and heads really kind of happen together when you stop and think about it we're going to get down I'm gonna use a couple of numbers I don't want to confuse you but I use a couple of numbers to show you what I mean then you have hearts which is the stuff that you really want to keep entails now the big question is when do I make these cuts well the way I look at I said well why don't I let the process help me the best that I possibly can and in a minute I'm going to demonstrate that for you but let's explain it first we know that as an example that ethanol is going to scientifically it atmospheric at sea level is going to boil at 170 3.1 degrees Fahrenheit or 78 point 37 degrees Celsius but that's it sea level none of us are always at sea level so we're going to be a different places so remember any of these numbers that we use yours may be a little bit off based on your elevation I mean gosh ask somebody from Denver Colorado how hard it is to boil potatoes you'll find there's a big difference okay but this is a good data point for you so if we know that we know that that's what ethanol does we know that water boils at sea level at 212 or 100 degrees Celsius now they have what's called an azeotrope mixture you know it's something like ninety almost 96 percent ethanol four percent well as long as you've got 4 percent of water in there you'll never get a hundred percent ethanol out because with the azeotrope difference it's a positive azeotrope which means that the boiling point of the elements that are in there when you mix them together the boiling point of that mixture is always a little bit lower than either of those boiling points and in this example 171 the boiling point is a boiling point of ethanol and 212 degrees is a boiling point of water well when you mix those two together the boiling point is going to be just a little bit lower than 171 so just then we know that that's at sea level so when we have two together if we went to 168 degrees Fahrenheit and we worked it up and we held it there now we know that methanol comes off at 145 Fahrenheit now ethanol is going to happen whether you like it or not because it's in the process on your scale on the way up so just allow that to happen on its own don't try to force that process and don't stop at 145 just continue on but when you get to 168 kind of hold it there and if you hold it there for about 10 minutes what will happen is that your still will start to run somewhere after 145 and it may even start prior to 145 all depending on the atmosphere pressure in your local area and everything else involved as that happens as that temperature starts to rise when you get up to 168 you hold it there for 10 minutes everything inside that column everything in here that's starting to mature I'd say or rise and start to fill that column is going to start to come out now remember 171 is ethanol 212 is water let's not increase beyond 168 for about 10 minutes which means that nothing in this pot is able to come out because you haven't reached that boiling point yet but all of your four shots and heads are already in that column and they're starting to maneuver all the way up to the top of the column you give them plenty of time as it starts to build a little bit of pressure and they'll start to come out now once that stops well you've taken out the four shots and heads by just waiting for about 10 minutes at 168 now how much you going to collect in a sugar wash you normally don't have a whole lot of methanol very very little to speak of but we know that as a standard practice 250 milliliters per five gallons is what you collect and throw away is your four shots heads on the other hand are different depending on what you've got in that pot so if you held it at 168 for ten minutes everything that you would consider heads in that pot are gone because what will happen is is that your condenser will quit producing when it stops producing you know you're done everything you collect from that moment on is going to be heads so once we get to our 168 we hold it there for 10 minutes we've gotten rid of our four shots and our heads they're gone we are now collecting hearts my friends will collect hearts and that will happen it 173 all the way up through 179 and again depending on the atmospheric pressure where you wear your red versus sea level some of your stills will run as high as 184 this is it'll take some up to 186 and again everything had everything is depending upon where you're measuring from make sure you're measuring rate at that rate at the point at the top of the head where the vapor goes into the condenser just measure the same place each time so find the sweet spot in your still but you'll continue to collect now when now we already know when to make the cut from four shots and heads we're in hearts now so in hearts territory we continue to collect continue to collect continue to collect now how do we know when to make the cut between hearts and Tails I'm here to tell you that yes there is a mathematical formula because at some point in time you get this balance within the wash and it can only do so much look your best guide is going to be your nose and your taste buds so if you know that you have a 20% mash in a five gallon batch you can anticipate collecting a gallon when you get to a half a gallon is when you should start to watch closely whether you're moving into the tails or not you see what I mean it gives you that idea if so it's kind of nice to know what the alcohol by volume is in your mash first it helps if you don't know that just keep an eye on it use smaller jars to collect but as you start to collect start to smell it you'll notice almost immediately when the odor changes and the taste changes now remember the tasting I'm talking about just a little bit on your finger not don't shot glasses if you do that during your hearts by the time you get details you're not going to know the difference so just smell it and people say it smells a little bit like Oh a wet cardboard smell it's a little bit more pungent to me than that but you'll notice it directly it either has a sweet neutral smell or all of a sudden you'll notice this wet cardboard or a stench maybe even like a burnt corn or some kind of burnt no you'll notice that in there immediately now you'll also be able to taste it and as soon as you get to that is when you stop collecting the hearts and you can start collecting tails when we collect tails for the only reason we collect tails because we know that there's a lot of alcohol left in there but there's also those conjures and all those other oils in an unrefined products that we got to get out we don't have to get them out but if we get them out it's helpful because we put that in the next batch don't worry if you put them in the next batch they'll separate out again and you'll wind up with tails again but you'll also wind up with a higher proof in your kettle so okay look that settles that we uh what it looks like on your still because I get this question a lot as well so when we're running that still let's say we get up to 145 and I hope you can see this you'll see a couple of drips come up a little bit there and then they'll start to drip now we're going from 145 to give to about 168 you hold it there and you'll notice that it'll start to drip a little bit more now there goes a run a couple more drips another run and see that's what I call the dribble the spurt the dribble the spurt it'll do that now what and you may even get something that looks like this for a second or two now what will happen is when you get to that 168 you hold it there for 10 minutes you're still all of all of a sudden do this it'll stop once it stops it's time to turn the heat up a little bit and once you get to that perfect temperature now watch your head temperature and you get up to the temperature of ethanol vaporizing some of that water you'll still start to drip again now that's when you're collecting hearts and you can now you'll notice as you see drip drip drip and the spurt drip drip drip spurt and it will continue to do that there's your spurt and I always say it's like the size of a pencil lead and that's for a good two-inch column a 3-inch column will produce a little bit more a little faster there goes another spurt see so it'll continue to do that until he gets down to your tails and at this point this is where you're going to smell and you're going to taste and remember when you do your taste it's just a little bit on the tip of your finger just don't you know don't taste shot glasses when you get trying to get through this but this is what it should look like when you're still running and it's running healthy now there are people that are going to confound that there are people are going to say that I'm wrong that's okay I've got thick skin our experience has shown that we make a very exquisite quality product by following these simple steps we wish you the very best in your brewing hobby remember never take advice or cooking advice from a skinny man and never take a sleeping pill and all accident at the same time we'll see you on the next of them

Channel: Barley and Hops Brewing

Views: 695,206

Keywords: barleyandhops, foreshots, how should my still run, collecting moonshine, and, hearts, how to cut moonshine, tails, home, distilling, cutiing distillate, heads, running a still, hops, barley

Id: GF53fTceh2g

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2016