Distilling 1.5: Keep Flavor, Cut Dilution Loss

Use distilling 1.5 architecture to avoid over-diluting high-proof new make and to keep more organics present during final concentration.

Quick summary

Core principle

There is another dimension to it, another approach to this sort of concentration factor that I think you should be aware of. And that has to do with distillation.

For example, we have an 8% wine or beer. We do a stripping run, and we bring it to whatever, 30%.

We have a finishing run, and we bring it to 80%. Right, we're making whiskey the traditional way.

Fermenting a beer, bringing it in a stripping run to 30%. Finishing run, bringing it to 80%.

Shouldn't be above 80% because in certain countries there are certain rules. 79% is the maximum, but for example 80%.

OK, but what proof do we barrel at, and what proof do we bottle at? And the real numbers are going to be slightly different, but stay with me.

I'm just going to say we're going to barrel at 60%. Normally you do 62%, 65%, but for example 60% because that's easier to calculate.

We're going to bottle, well, I would say craft distilled whiskey, 45% no less. But for example 40% just because the calculations are easy.

So you've bought equipment, right? You've not followed this course.

You've listened to how to make whiskey, and instead of getting a toolbox, you were told like do this, do that, do such, do so. And then you'll get my exact whiskey, and now it's yours.

You're going to barrel at 60%. What's the first thing you're going to do before you can barrel?

The first thing you're going to do before you can barrel at 60% is dilute your new make spirit of 80% and dilute it back to 60%. You just lost a quarter of your flavors, a quarter of all the esters that I've been talking about for hours and hours now that I want you to develop, that I want you to excel upon, that I want you to harvest and concentrate.

How it works in practice

You really want to be a craft distiller? Or do you want to work for big alcohol? You just lost a quarter of your flavor profile.

Then it's going from the barrel where it gets more flavor. But anyhow, and then you bottle at 40%. So in the end, you end up from 80% to 40%.

All the work I've been trying to do here with you of creating top shelf, competition-beating quality products is down the drain because you threw half of your flavors away by dilution. Same discussion as we had about fermentation and going for 8% or 13%. Now there's more water dilution than there is booze to start with.

So what do you do to change this procedure? At least I think it's very easy. But then again, I don't have any issue thinking outside of the box.

The rest of the distilling world seems to be totally traditional and not able to change anything in their approach. So we can make worse products. What if we distill 1 and 1 half times?

What if we take an 8% beer and we distill it, stripping run, end up with 30%? And instead of re-distilling that, we add a fresh batch of 8% beer to that one. So you may say it's now 38%, but it isn't 38% because we've got twice the volume, right?

We've got alcohol at 30% and a new batch of beer at 8%. So if you combine them, they're probably closer to around, what is it, 16%, 17%. What happens if I re-distill, if I do a finishing run on a combination of strippings and fresh 8% beer?

The hard cut of a 17%, 18% boiler charge on a finishing run is 60% instead of 80%. If I want a barrel age after this, I don't have to dilute 25% of my flavors away. So I call this distilling 1.5.

It's called 1.5 because in the finishing run, you basically combine one stripping with one fresh batch of beer. So you don't need to double distill. Part of it is double distilled once, twice, and part of it is basically single distilled.

Common mistakes and decisions

The beer, the second batch of beer, is only distilled once. It's used to dilute the low wines with, basically. So we don't dilute a quarter of our flavor.

Like in general, I come at 62%, 63%. It works out perfectly fine on an 8% beer to start with. And I don't have to do that many runs.

So I can go to production, produce quicker. There's another advantage to the 1.5 distilling that I want you to think about. And the other advantage of the 1.5 distilling is this.

You remember that in the esterification formula, creating flavors, you needed alcohol present and organics. Now, in a stripping run, For example, we've got alcohol and organics present. So a lot of flavor is still done.

You remember how I said that 80% of your flavor comes from fermentation? Well, there's something happening in the boiler if there's organics present during distillation. Esters are still being formed when there are alcohols and organics present.

But during the finishing run, in the traditional setup, low wines that we resolve, the 30% low wines, are a clear spirit. That means that on the finishing run, since there's no organics present, I do not add flavor. Not just the heads cut and the tails cut, but in general, what's left in the boiler versus what comes out.

If we do a finishing run like the 1.5 proposition, where we basically add that shitload of 8% beer with organics, we even create esterification on the finishing run. So not only do we not lose 25% of flavor to dilution, we actually add another 20% to 25% because we are adding esters, creating flavor molecules during our finishing run.

Continue with Extends boiler-charge logic into 1.5 run architecture. to build directly on this foundation.

One-Point-Five Architecture

Distilling 1.5 combines stripped low wines with fresh fermented wash for the finishing charge. The objective is to reduce dilution loss and keep more organics present in the final concentration step.

Key Takeaways