Jesse's Ultimate Guide To Kick Ass Cuts For Distillation

cuts for distillation literally one of the most important things to learn in this hobby is how to make good cuts and this video is going to give it to you so it's going to give you the whole a to z of kind of the overview and the process of what you do but more importantly it's going to give you specific little tips and tricks along the way to really help you make kick-ass cuts how's it going chases i hope you're having a kick-ass week cuts like i said in the intro these are literally one of the most important things that you can learn to really start producing a quality product with distillation and this method is going to have you dividing uh your entire run up into multiple different jars so you can go back and check it later on that's a relatively basic idea so the real meat and potatoes of this video is the little tips that pop up along the way that are going to you know step your game up at each point of the process and all those little tiny gains are going to add up to making something a whole lot better so for new distillers i mean there's just really not a lot out there that's more important in terms of getting a leg up in the in the hobby in the craft in creating spirits quickly than nailing cuts and for the experienced distillers creating cuts in your way for your method with your goals in mind is really one of the ways that you get to sort of have some creative expression in the hobby and really create what it is that you want to create now i know this method of dividing it up into multiple jars is just not practical on a large scale so it's not going to be for people running a commercial distillery i totally get that in saying that what you can do on a commercial level is use this method for your test batches uh use this method on your pilot still perhaps uh to really get something dialed in to really understand a spirit and then be able to you know go to making cuts on the fly with your larger equipment the same goes for the home distiller that wants to make that just wants to dial in a recipe or you know you just want to nail that perfect single malt that perfect style of single malt and you keep making it over and over and over again you can use this method that i'm going to teach you the first few times to really understand the spirit get it dialed in and then switch to making cuts on the fly as the spirit's coming off the still so all in all basically what i'm telling you is that watching this video understanding this method and these tips and tricks is going to help you just make much much much more effective and reliable cuts speaking of effective and reliable it's time to talk about today's sponsor manscaped they sent over their performance package for me to check out these guys no kick-ass packaging design but let's get on to what is inside that package shall we you may have noticed that they have a ball deodorant and ball toner because let's face it your junk gets kind of funky sometimes they also have a nose and ear 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to make more sense so let's jump on over to the still for a second shall we so the basic principle of this is super super simple we're not doing anything different with the still we're not running the still differently we're not doing anything weird or wonderful there literally all we're doing when we're running the still is collecting into individual jars and literally as one fills up we move it over we put the next one in and this one's going to start filling up i'm not actually running this still today because i wanted to really focus on making this video kick ass rather than making product i think you get the idea though right guys as a jar fills up we number it we move it off we put another one underneath we collect these jars up and keep them in order and you're going to end up with something that looks like this so this is our entire run spread out in front of us divided into little jars why well simply because it means that now i can go along and taste this versus this and then this versus this and that versus this and different things from different parts of the run against each other which i'd never be able to do as a if i was collecting on the flight off the still so perhaps when i was collecting on the still i thought that yes this is uh the end of heads and this is where hearts are starting i'm going to make the cut and now this goes into the pot you can't take that out once it's once it's in the pot it's in there uh but now when i'm over here on the bench that i taste this next to this i can decide actually i don't know if i want this in there so i think the overall process makes a whole lot of sense to you i think you understand uh how you kind of physically do this on a really basic level let's get stuck into the tips and tricks that are going to make it a whole lot more easy and a whole lot more effective for you the first one might seem really freaking obvious but but i have personally screwed up with this at least once as the jars are coming off the still either be insanely religious about the order that you put them down so you know exactly what jar comes before and after what other jar or to be honest what you should probably do is label them as they come off the still that's just going to help you out a whole lot later it's going to give you peace of mind you're not going to have to worry about it like i said i have mixed this up before you know where i've put things in rows and columns to to you know make better use of a space uh and then i've forgotten you know there's a random jar left out afterwards and i don't know where it came from it's not the end of the world because you can just assess it in and of itself but makes things a whole lot easier if you keep it well organized the next thing to keep in mind is the jars themselves and what i mean by that is you're going to want to collect up a pretty large collection of jars and there are certain things you want to look for believe it or not that are going to make your life easier so the first thing is you're going to want to find your standard kind of jar size and you're going to want to make up most of your jar collection with a very similar kind of jar so for me i use jam jars peanut butter jars whatever as long as they can fit 500 mils and you can actually see that i've put little marks on the jars to sort of indicate different volumes at different parts of the jars i haven't engraved all of them but most of the the jars in my standard collection are engraved and the reason for that is for the especially for the the hearts part of your run once you're pretty sure you're in the hearts it is really really advantageous later on in the process to be able to fill the jars to the same volume over and over and over again so knowing that jar 5 is 500 mils 6 7 8 9 and 10 are all 500 mils makes things a whole lot easier later on if we want to mess around with tinctures or doing like little test blends but you'll see that up here at the beginning of the run i've got some randomly sized jars and the reason for that is that as i'm switching or transitioning between sort of areas on the run i like to have better resolution so for example let's say that this is going to be the turning point of heads to hearts and somewhere in this jar is where i really want to make the cut if i could make the cut drip perfect well if that happens halfway through this jar and this jar is only 100 mils then i've lost 50 mls of product that i could have kept as hearts for example having you know a few sort of five or ten of these randomly sized different sized jars is going to serve quite well once you get better at this process the inverse will be helpful as well it'll be nice to have something that's you know two or three liters perhaps and once you know that you're solidly in the hearts and you just you've done this process a few times and you know that the next two or three liters of product is all going to go into your cut having a jar that's you know three or four liters you can just whack under the still and let run for a while that's pretty handy too now the exact size of jars that's going to best suit you is going to basically depend on the size of your still but also the size of the wash that you're putting into the still so what i mean by that is if you're doing 150 liter washes three stripping runs and you know popping them through the still into one spirit run that's a lot of spirit you're making so if you're collecting jars that are 150 mils you better have a whole lot of them on the flip side if you're running a little you know five liter pot still then collecting into 500 ml jars is going to be pretty close to half your run so it kind of defeats the purpose of course obviously you don't have to fill jars full the next step is to make sure you're not tuning out while you're running the still i know i know i get it you're saving everything you're going to assess it later on you're going to make cuts later on so on and so forth but here's the thing guys it's still important to be tasting what's coming off this spout throughout the run but i'll give you the two ways that i do it number one is to use a glen keen glass simply because uh there really is something magical about the shape of these glasses that lets you knows products really really well so i'll just literally take that pop it under the spout and then top it up with a little water if needed depending on the proof of what's coming out and the type of product that's coming out let it sit for a couple of minutes um you know give it a wee smell swirl have a smell have a taste to really get an idea of what's happening on the still at that point in time the second one and i probably shouldn't be telling you this but i'll be honest i do it a lot it's just literally stick my finger under the spout and taste it and then to go a step further i quite often put my finger under the spout give it a rub on my hands just you know like kind of make it very volatile and then have a smell but why do you want to do that well first of all it's going to help you find transition points during the run so like i said earlier when i'm standing over at the desk i like to move down to smaller jars to to basically give me greater resolution when i'm getting to the tricky decision points of the run uh number two it is a really nice way to just get a feel for the spirit that's coming off the the still before you start making active decisions you're going to start building this kind of mind map of what happened oh it's fruity and floral up front but there's some weird nasty jaggy potpourri heads but as it gets down to the bottom we're starting to fight between you know when does the dog the wet dog turn up but there's some nice full bodied you know creamy mouth feel down the bottom you get the idea right all i'm saying is if you're tasting it throughout the run you're going into your cuts with a bit of a map as to what to expect already built into your brain and lastly it's just a really good way to train yourself to make cuts on the fly so as it's coming off the still you can practice if you want to you can take some notes and say right if i was making cuts on the fly as the product was coming off the still i would have cut it at jar 12. and when you get to the bench and when you assess it later on check your own work see how you're doing the next tip is about just chilling and taking your time if you need to i used to recommend covering your jars up and letting them kind of air out for about 24 hours sort of 12 to 24 hours to let the more volatile stuff kind of just evaporate and make it easier to taste and assess your product i'm not so sure that that's really worthwhile anymore but what i do think is worthwhile is just taking some time out if you've been running still for four six twelve hours or something crazy and you've been tasting as you go i mean let's face it it's kind of an intense process you're probably a little bit burnt out and you're probably not in the best mindset the best physical state to actually assess your product i think most of the benefit in waiting is coming from getting yourself back to a better mind state put all your jars aside cover them up go and have something to eat have a tea do whatever it is that's going to get you into the right mindset and to sort of clean your palate cleanse your palate and get you to the right point where you can taste the cuts once you're at that point have at it here's a few little tips though guys if you are going to leave it sitting make sure you cover it up properly because even if you think you don't have bugs around you're probably going to find some if you uh if you leave your jars out uncovered for a few hours uh honestly the easiest way for me is just to line them all up throw some paper towels over the top and leave them like that if you're going to have to leave them for more than 20-24 hours you're going to want to find a way to to seal them up to cover them up because let's face it guys they're just going to keep evaporating and they're not going to sit around and wait for you forever the next tip has to do with the proof that you sample or taste everything at and honestly the the best advice i can give you here is don't be a hero don't go tasting stuff at a crazy high abv just because you think that's what you should do for some daft weird macho reason or because it's the proof that's sitting in front of you proof it down to a abv or a proof that you are comfortable tasting at if you're you know drinking barrel proof stuff all the time then that's cool you know tasting at 55 that's just going to be normal for you and in some ways that's probably what you should taste at to get an idea of um what's going on in those samples but uh if you drink 40 whiskey with ice in it or water in it or something uh you're probably going to want to knock the abv down to that sort of level of abv or proof that you're used to tasting it another tip is that you may even want to proof it down a little bit lower than that just to really sort of open those samples up open the the stuff that you're tasting up uh and see if there's anything else hiding in there that you wouldn't taste at a higher abv this is especially useful for hunting for tails if you've got something that you're not sure if it's tailsy or not proof it down a little bit further get it down to 35 30 perhaps and you're going to be able to tell a whole lot easier if there are tails lurking in that specific jar now the exact mechanics of how you do this i get it if you've got 30 odd jars sitting in front of you it can be kind of a pain in the ass to figure out how to proof them all down there's two things that i would suggest you consider using number one is one of these guys a syringe shock horror i know that's plastic and rubber yeah i use it all the time to be perfectly honest with you guys my thinking is i'm not storing anything in it it's going to be in there for all of four seconds if that super super easy to be able to draw a sample of a very specific volume out and deposit it somewhere else and mix it with you know a certain amount of water pro tip here which i probably should have mentioned earlier on guys if you're really onto it when you're taking your cuts off the still you can write on the jar what the percentage abv it is at that point in time you know you've probably got time to do that while you're running the still and then when you get around to tasting it and proofing it down you've already got the numbers in front of you so you can figure out how much water you need to add to how much alcohol to get the proof you want cool if you don't like this idea for whatever reason or you know you just don't have one handy there is one other thing that you can do sorry it's in my pocket where i often keep my spoons teaspoons this doesn't work so well so don't let your significant other see you doing this but uh so simple so very practical yes don't worry guys we are actually going to get into tasting these cuts and tips on that soon but one last thing that i want to mention before that and that is the vessel or the glass that you're going to be sampling out of now if you've watched this channel at all for any length of time you will know that i use these things a whole lot glencain glasses yes they do actually make a difference no you don't specifically have to use these glen cans uh you can pick up a chase to craft glen can glass on the chaser craft store except right now you can't because they're i think out of stock we're working on getting those back as soon as possible i'm actually sipping on some buffalo trace while recording this video quite nice what i'm saying is guys is the the vessel or the glass that you drink out of really does matter uh and at the very very least make sure that you're consistent with the glass that you're tasting out of for the run that you're tasting out of so what i'm saying is don't have one glen can sitting here and taste a couple of samples out of that and then you know pour some into a glass like this and taste it out of this because you will you will change the results based on the glass that you're drinking out of if you don't want glen cans i totally get that they are expensive they just are but aiming for this kind of tulip shaped glass really does help with a bowl at the bottom a narrower top at the top and about this sort of distance between the two is ideal you can get wine glasses and stuff that are you know that they're pretty close yes i know i'm using these as a prop as uh cuts jars i do actually use my clean cans as cut jars from time to time just because the volume is great i know it's kind of ridiculous to be using these glasses for cuts but i do actually do it anyway shall we move on so we're at the point now where you've got all of your jars all of your cuts lined up in front of you you're all ready to go and you're ready to start tasting now a lot of people's first i guess inclination or first instinct is to start at one end and move all the way through to the other end and i can get why you would think that but that's actually not a good idea what you should do is aim right for the middle straight away right for the middle of what you think is totally safe hearts so you take a sample you proof it down to a proof that you're ready to taste at and i think i forgot to mention in the last point you want to be tasting everything at pretty a pretty similar proof so you don't want to be comparing stuff that's 80 to stuff that's you know 45 for example uh you want to be trying everything at the same proof all right so at that stage aim for the middle the reason for this is that that is going to be the safest spot in terms of protecting your pallet for as long as possible if you dive straight in up here and you get it a little bit wrong and you you know take a large whack of heads you might blow your pellet out completely same if you go way down here to the tails and you just get like a giant dose of nasty ass wet dog that might blow your palate out for a little while you might not be able to taste anything else so start in the middle and work your way up and down and out if that makes sense getting closer and closer to where you think you're going to exclude product from your cut once you start to sort of dial in that you think that somewhere in this area is where the transition from heads to hearts's and we'll talk a little bit on what you're looking for in a minute then you can start going down here and looking for the general area where you think the tails is and then go back and find the specific locations for both once again you're just trying to kind of preserve your palette for a little bit longer give yourself the the longest amount of time uh actively tasting in a meaningful manner and that leads on to our next tip which is give yourself time if you get to the point where you're just a little bit overwhelmed by all of this and trust me it happens to me all the time you know especially if you've got a big large amount of jars on the table you'll get to a point where you just you're kind of guessing and you don't really know what you're tasting take a break man go inside sit down drink a beer or or have a cup of coffee or tea or whatever it is that you do um have dinner watch half an hour of tv whatever it happens to be just just hit the reset button and then come back to it and that'll remove a whole lot of mistakes from the process for you uh it'll stop you doing things on autopilot it'll stop you kind of guessing and i'm sure we know when we do this right you know you're kind of going through the motions and guessing and not really doing things properly you want to remove that from your process so what is the actual goal of tasting all of this the the actual goal is to decide what you're going to keep and what you're not going to keep and the simplest version of this is that you have heads heads heads you change hearts hearts hearts hearts tails and you change the heads and the tails go into faints and you keep the hearts put them all together and use them for this you know this run doesn't necessarily mean you have to do it that way though you might cut straight from heads to hearts here and then say right this is tails at this point i don't like this jar and this jar but by the time i get to this jar there's actually something kind of interesting going on maybe there is some of the bad stuff but maybe there's some good stuff that i want as well uh and i'll keep a little bit of this jar and saying that you also don't need to keep whole jars if you're really sitting on the fence about oh man there's some delicious fruit flavor here in my fruit brandy that i've made but it is a little bit prickly and spiky um you can decide to keep half a jar you don't have to keep the whole jar and we'll talk a little bit more about that and the way you can test that in a minute so what are you actually thinking about to decide whether you like something or don't like something and whether or not to keep it or not keep it the biggest one for me is smell and i'm including the whole retro nasal thing in that so a lot of what most people think about as flavor is not actually flavor it's smell if you don't know what i'm talking about look up the whole retro nasal thing google it check it out that'll help you out a whole lot so smell retronasal smell or kind of like the the smells you taste actual taste and then the presence in your mouth and what i mean by that is is it prickly is it sharp is it burny or is it creamy or is it velvety is it smooth is it jaggy and then all of the kind of things that that bridge sensation and flavor so bitterness astringency those kind of things that are kind of not quite here nor the air the general things to look out for in the general things to try and avoid in the heads side of things is a prickly piercing tingly sensation around your mouth a smell or aroma that's really like kind of cleaning products can be can be acetone turpentine a lot of i quite often find a lot of weird sort of fake fruity potpourri kind of estuary things going on up here problem is the problem is is if you're working with fruit quite often a lot of the the really fresh delicate flavor of the fruit that you're working with is going to live around here so if you're working with fruit products quite often there is a give and take when you're making a spirit as to how much heads you're going to let into how much fruit flavour you're willing to lose and that's really that's really your call down on the other end when we get down to the tails the sort of stereotypical things that often get thrown around are wet dog wet cardboard toe jam um all of these weird kind of funky uh musky nasty sort of things going on uh and this is the opposite so with brandies and fruit stuff a lot of the flavor decisions you have to make here in terms of compromises uh with a lot of the whiskies you're gonna be making compromises down here the grain uh earthy um more dark sort of grungy flavours that come from whiskey are generally sitting around in this area and if you're using smoke especially if you've got smoke in there you're going to go delving down into the tails a little bit to find that and you're going to be doing the same thing you're going to be trading off between the flavors you want and the flavors you don't want and deciding exactly how much of a compromise one way or the other you're going to make another tip that really has to be mentioned i think at this point in time is the longer you plan on aging something the more you can get away with grabbing or how do i put this without putting you completely wrong the more you can get away with grabbing at flavors that you want to keep and assume that a lot of the flavors you don't want are going to change over time and a lot of the master distillers especially from you know scotland will say that that's the magic taking that that weird stuff that's sitting down around here gives them more smoke for example if it's a peated single malt but also some of the funky weird stuff that lives down here is the magic that turns into the the x factor over time in a barrel now this is hard man this is really hard because how long are you gonna age it for let's say you're gonna age it for two years uh what if you get that wrong you're not gonna know you get it wrong for two years right so my i guess my idea on this is to err on the side of being a little bit clean if there's a flavor in there that you just really don't like i would cut it out for now while you're getting used to this one final tip in terms of the the flavors that you're looking for here to keep or not keep i would suggest finding a commercial example of the kind of spirit that you're trying to make so if you are making you know like i said a fruit brandy go and buy a nice fruit brandy the same kind of fruit that you're working with and really look in that brandy to see where it sits in terms of how much heads they've let through are you do you enjoy that much heads in your products do you not enjoy that much head in your heads in your product you get the idea right the same with whisky go and go and have a taste and then have a think about the weird flavors that you can actually find in scotch that do sort of come from this area and you may find that you actually almost enjoy some of these things in very low amounts without knowing it that's just one more tip i think in terms of getting a little bit of a calibration on this without having to just do it hundreds of times the next tip is to do all of this with a notebook next to you or a laptop and an excel spreadsheet or whatever it is that you feel comfortable working in as you're tasting the product think about what you're tasting what you like what you don't like think about the flavors that might work well with something or not work well with something think about all the flavors that you've tasted and what they're adding up to keep notes talk about what's in each jar you know jar 27 awesome smoke but way too wet dog or you know use your own short hand and the reason i say to do this is similar to the idea of what i was saying in terms of creating a mind map of the spirit as it's coming off the still now we're really starting to flesh out our understanding of what's in these jars and putting it down onto paper kind of forces you to really think about it so in some ways it's more about making you think than actually having the notes afterwards but the flip side of that is if you get to a point when you're blending and you're not quite sure what to do looking back at those notes and being able to see an overview of everything that you've tasted at a glance rather than having to remember what's where can be super super valuable the next little section of this process or the next tip that i want to give you is probably one of my personal favorites in terms of just the sheer enjoyability of going through this process so we've got all our cuts laid out in front of us we know roughly that we're going to cut here for heads for example and here for tails for example and we've got our notebook or our computer or whatever it happens to be with all our notes written down now is not the time in my opinion to start throwing things together now is the time to sip step back and think and conceptualize what this can become what you want it to become what you're aiming for what your goals are whether the raw ingredients in front of you are going to really give you what you want in your opinion and to to make a plan for how you're going to blend this stuff together so for example let's talk pete because it's my favorite topic but i'm trying to make let's say a a a peated single malt here the number one goal i'm probably going to have is to get the amount of peat i want in it right so straight away that changes my mindset rather than just oh heads-y stuff bad tells you stuff bad i keep hearts instead of thinking in that really simplistic manner now i'm thinking about how do i build up a smoke profile and what else do i want to layer in with it to build out a product that's got multiple dimensions to it for example so i start thinking how much smoke is sitting in this area here there's a bit but then it's going to be balanced out with this that's got absolutely no smoke in it so perhaps i want to start delving a little bit deeper into these kinds of things now i know that sounds really eerie fairy and i know that might sound really strange or um scary to people if they haven't done this sort of thing before but in my mind it's literally the same as going to your pantry and thinking what should i cook tonight i'm not going to use a cookbook that i'm just going to uh look through and start putting things together and i'll use this sauce with that spice it's kind of the same sort of idea right i think about flavors that are very very similar that work together towards a common goal so once again to go back to the you know the more food or baking world uh milk and vanilla i mean how many times have you seen that combination all the freaking time right or if that's not your jam uh let's try another one i'm trying to do this off to the top of my head and i'm stalling because i can't think of uh coffee dark coffee and dark chocolate similar flavors that work towards the same goal i'm not talking about your milk chocolates i'm talking about that dark ass chocolate like 80 and up plus black coffee similar flavors absolutely banging together but you can also pick things that are completely at polar opposites from each other right you can pick things that are very very different things that are going to kind of fight each other and in that tension that they cause between each other they're going to create magic the classic sweetens our sauce is another one that you know kind of jumps to mind with this sort of thing the point being is think about where you're getting flavours that'll add to each other and think about where you're getting flavours that'll contradict each other and how you can use that to improve the spirit overall the other thing to think about is kind of the the weight the feel the the the texture of the spirit and if you're for example going for something that is supposed to be uh the complete opposite the complete opposite of a isle of scotch you want it to be light and you know feel almost efficient on the tongue you might want to avoid the stuff down here simply because it's heavier and grungier in terms of the feeling on your tongue maybe it's not in your specific example i'm just saying if it is you might want to consider excluding some of this stuff it's not adding perhaps any flavor specifically that you like all it's doing is adding volume to the blend and kind of grunging it up a little bit in terms of that weight or it could go the opposite way you want something really thick you want something really luxurious on your tongue and you have you know a couple of jars here that are really just tasting kind of like neutral spirit compared to everything else and all they're going to do is kind of uh make the blend feel more volatile on your tongue perhaps that's not what you want i've got two more tips that i really think you should listen to but uh before i give you those i need to say a huge huge thank you to the patreons thank you so much patreons uh for letting me do this kind of stuff i really really do appreciate it guys so thank you the next tip is basically not to just get carried away and yolo this whole thing if you get to this point you've put a whole lot of work into this right you've made you've made the wash you've fermented it you've distilled it blah blah blah blah blah you put so much work into this don't jump the gun just yet so my tip to you would be to consider doing one of two things the first one and the easiest one is to get to the point where anything that you're not sure about you remove so let's say we're not sure we're cutting somewhere here but we don't know this is definitely in but these two we're going to make our mind up about later remove those from the situation for just now and the same down here we definitely know that this is out that's just nasty we don't want it move it over these two we can't decide on perhaps we want some of that smoke perhaps we don't we haven't decided yet um let's move these over but this one is pretty clean there's no wet dog and there is some very interesting peat in it for example all right so now we've got these uh five jars here and we're almost certain we're almost completely certain that we're keeping these right whack these into a container blend them all together and have a taste see where you're sitting and uh use that to decide whether or not to add you know these two or this one or whatever it happens to be the reason i say to do that is that quite often it's hard to get a feeling of what the aggregate flavor is going to be so if we're sure that all of this is just we're 100 sure we're keeping it why not put it together blend it together and have a taste and see what it's like at that point you can either just make a gut call about you know what um you know what this has actually got heaps of peach flavor from my peach brandy and it's not worth messing with the borderline really headsy stuff to get a little bit more peach flavor out of it i'm going to leave it out or the flip side of it you know you know what this single mole is not tasting very smoky and it is also tasting very very clean so sure i'm gonna with this and half of this for example i just it it gets you one step closer without having to do every step in one go cool all right the other way to do it is to make a tincture so basically we're going to make a test batch and the reason that i said way back when that you want to try and keep as many of these jars especially in the middle at known volumes as possible is because of this right now so our trusty syringe or teaspoon again you can literally grab yourself another vessel or even just straight into a cup and go along and take a known volume out of each of these and just do the math on how much of um you know each other one you're going to add in so let's say that each of these are 500 mils and that these are whatever i mean i know they're not but 100 mils and 100 mils you go and take five five five five five one one one mill out of each of them blend them all in together into a cup let them sit stir them up a little bit proof them down taste it is it too wet dog is it too nasty from the tails is it too headsy from up here yes or no does it have enough smoke does it have enough fruit you can basically do a test blend of your cuts without committing to anything this last tip is probably honestly the most important out of all of these because it allows you to improve on an ever increasing and self-repeating cycle and that is literally just to make sure that you record everything that you do and then go back and compare that against the results and the reason for that is simply because this hobby this craft the cycle between doing something and figuring out whether you did good or whether you're up is so freaking long that you need to make sure you're doing it so assess your spirits because you your skill as a person assessing the spirit is going to improve the more you do it your skill as a distiller is going to improve the more you do it and your ability to um articulate what it is that you just personally like and don't like is going to improve as well so taste the spirit assess it figure out what you like about it what you don't like about it and then look back at your notes of how you made that look back at what you were doing in the past how can you adjust how can you improve how can you apply what you've just learned to the next batch you make really that's all there is to it and it sounds simple and obvious yet you would be amazed how many people never do this actively they just kind of passively go through the motions and assume they remember what they did to make this spirit so there you have it guys i believe i've earned my whiskey tonight this was kind of a lot of information to put together into one video but i really hope it helped you out guys i really really really do if any of you have suggestions on other tips and tricks that you want to add to this please by all means stick them down in the comments and one final tip for the new distiller is things like this are a lot of freaking information they really are and it how do you put it it can seem really simple on the surface until you start doing it and then when you start doing it you realize all of the little nuances that go into these kind of things so this might be the sort of thing where you want to watch the video a couple of times before you do your first set of cuts do it a few times and then come back and watch the video again or go back and find some other sources to to read through or listen to and you know don't give up on the learning cycle after your first go or so because there really is layers of this that you there's no way you can understand how important different things are until you've got your hands dirty basically is what i'm saying anyway keep on chasing the craft guys i'll catch you next time see ya you

Channel: Still It

Views: 159,277

Keywords: Cuts, distilling, home distilation, home distillation, heads, hearts, tails, making the cut, Jesse, Still it, Chase the craft

Id: osefkvhjAjo

Length: 41min 37sec (2497 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021