This evening I are mostly confused by..

[MrCat]

SS Smoky Malt essence.
I\'m not putting this in flavourings as I\'m not a whiskey drinker so I can\'t comment on how good/bad authentic the taste is but this confused me for a few mins and then made me laugh.
Last week I made up two bottles of whiskey for a mate. One was the SS smoky Malt Whiskey and the other was the SS finest Reserve.
The bottles have been left for a week so I thought I\'d give them a little test.
Opened the Smoky first, my initial thought was it tasted like tails. I was a bit confused by this as it\'s a mistake I could have made a while ago but I couldn\'t think how the tails had got in there. Had it been a bottle I\'d used before for tails? Had I picked up a container of tails waiting to go back through the reflux ??
I then tried the SS Classic Finest Reserve which was ok.
Then I remembered something. I\'d taken 1.5 litres from \'stores\' of very good neutral 40%, split in into two and made both bottles at the same time. One of the bottles tasted of tails but the other one didn\'t. The taste of tails was from the essence and not my handy-work.
I really can\'t see the point of learning how to make cuts and then paying to put the taste of tails back in

[Phantom]

Hum? Well don\'t forget where some of the flavour comes from anyway ?
Most whisky is produced with a pot still, a nice inefficient pot still.
sure even if 2 distilleries are making to the same recipe, if they have different shaped stills then different amounts of tails, esters, etc etc will pass through to the final blend won\'t it.