StillSmart

This is something I found over on the SD forum, it's regarding using feints for Whisky and the fact that you will never, ever need to do anything with them regarding any sort of methanol build up, or any other build up of undesirables.

I'm sure that Easydrinker uses a similar method with his whiskys, after reading it I intend to keep feints for all my flavoured spirits forever without concern of any sort of dangerous build up of methanol or other compounds.

http://lists.grsnet.net/pipermail/mm-ma ... 44737.html

The only bit I don't understand is the last paragraph, it refers to a diagram that isn't there and the numbers don't make sense to me at this moment in time.

I'm fairly sure that he's saying that since methanol and other fores/heads boil at a lower temperature, they evaporate at a greater rate proportionally, so make sure to give the angels a good share.

Edit, that would also make sense in the context of aging, since oak barrels are not 100% "tight" and the nasties with lower boiling/evaporation points would leach out more/first.

Thats how I read it.

The reason I posted it was because I found it really interesting when they talk about a point of equilibrium that is reached in the feints receiver after 5-6 spirit runs.

I always assumed if you used the same feints over and over, eventually there will be a build up of forshots (methanol) that could eventually reach a dangerous level.

However this is not the case, both the most and least volatile components stabilise once the point equilibrium is reached (after 5-6 spirit runs)

The most volatile evaporate and the least volatile eventually remain in the backwash and are wash out with the backset.

Also interesting that they allude to the fact the the spirit still head and condenser are not cleaned between spirit runs, they rely on the high alcohol content of the foreshore to clean out the oils in the condenser at the beginning of the next spirit run.

Those numbers at the end hurt my head,until I read it a few times!
I have found that making whisky the way that I do, using a feints receiver method, a 25kg sack of Barley and around 140 litres of water for the mashes,six strip runs of around 21 litres, and three spirit runs adding in the feints each time works well.
My feints have settled to a demi john friendly 5 litres at around 45%.

Robert.