What Is In The Heads Of Moonshine?

Heads – During distillation, the mash is heated in the still, causing the liquids to turn to vapor. Because alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature than water, the first thing that comes off the still is methanol, commonly referred to as the “foreshots” or the “heads.” Back when I worked for a moonshine brand, people would ask me, “Doesn’t moonshine make you go blind?” Like all tall tales, there is a bit of truth there.

1. The heads portion of the distillate comprises mostly methanol, and consuming methanol can lead to blindness and even death.
2. So inexperienced whiskey makers can indeed create lethal cocktails — albeit unintentionally.
3. We have even heard stories about Prohibition-era bootleggers and moonshiners purposefully sending batches of heads to bars that hadn’t paid for their last shipment.

The concentrated methanol killed every customer in the bar that day, sending a very serious message to the bar owner. In the world of whiskeys you can legally purchase, the heads section is always cut out.

What do distillers do with the heads?

Collecting the Heart – Once the distiller makes the first cut, the heads are generally either disposed of or redistilled in able to collect more alcohol from them. After the distiller has decided that the quality of the incoming distillate is good enough to keep for drinking purposes, they will cut to “hearts”.

1. Hearts are ultimately what become the finished product.
2. They contain the bulk of the ethanol we want along with flavors and aromas that make our spirit unique.
3. All good things must come to an end, however.
4. Eventually the emerging hearts distillate will steadily take on unpleasant aromas and flavors, sometimes even developing some bitterness.

This is when the distiller will make another cut and divert the distillate flow to another container for the remainder of the distillation run. The distillate at this point is called “tails” and it has increasingly lower amounts of alcohol. Additionally, higher amounts of bad aromas due to the growing amount of fusel alcohols come over in the still. Waterford Distillery’s Head Brewer Neil determines when to make the cut / Photo Credit: Waterford Distillery

What makes moonshine so bad?

Methanol Risks – While the flammability of the moonshine distillation process is dangerous in and of itself, the health effects of moonshine-methanol consumption pose an even bigger threat. More people have died from drinking moonshine than by any explosions at stills, despite the few old and handmade stills that are left.

1. A major risk of drinking moonshine is methanol blindness.
2. Detecting methanol upon the first step is impossible, and consuming more of it will simply get the person drunker.
3. However, it’s eventually metabolized as its toxic metabolite, formic acid, in the body, which can have an extremely harmful effect.

Just 10 milliliters (ml) of methanol is all it takes to cause permanent optic and partial nerve damage, if not complete blindness. As little as 30 ml of methanol is lethal, and, for reference, a standard shot glass in the U.S. holds 40 ml. Old stills use car radiators during the distilling process, which often contain lead soldering and remnants of antifreeze glycol products that could contaminate and add toxins to the moonshine.

• Larger batches of moonshine are more likely to contain methanol.
• Because methanol is vaporized or evaporated at a lower temperature than alcohol, the first liquid produced by the distillation process usually contains methanol.
• While moonshiners have adopted new ways to discard methanol, some moonshiners will actually add it back into the batch to make the drink more potent.

However, because these processes aren’t regulated, there’s no way of knowing whether the illicit alcohol actually contains any methanol.

What are the three stages of moonshine?

Heads, Hearts, and Tails | Distilling Blog As mentioned in a previous blog post, Heads, Hearts & Tails can be generally defined as the following:

Heads: Spirits from the beginning of the run that contain a high percentage of low boiling point alcohols and other compounds such as aldehydes and ethyl acetate. Hearts: The desirable middle alcohols from your run. Tails: A distillate containing a high percentage of fusel oil and little alcohol at the end of the run.

Let’s take this blog in another direction to further add to the often conflicting advice given to newbie distillers, shall we? You’re welcome. So often the new distiller views their skill level based upon his or her ability to know where to make the exact cut between each (heads, hearts, or tails) part of the run.

To the fledgling distiller, pinpointing the exact transition between each segment of the run can be interpreted as finding the good alcohol vs the bad alcohol. However, collecting distillate based on the most insipid sensory awareness profiles is what actually happens to many newly minted distillers that read and perhaps misinterpret how making cuts should benefit finished spirits? This strategy of exactitude works really well for those who make alcohol with table sugar only.

But soon wears thin with those making an all-grain whiskey or a full-bodied rum/rhum. And so, as the distiller gains more and more experience making cuts, the distiller ends up being quite good at finding the dead center Hearts cut. In doing so he/she becomes quite skilled at making a very “smooth” spirit.

Yes, very “smooth”. So “smooth”. The “smoothest”. Nobody makes it “smoother”. Oy, that sounds suitably forgettable. The problem here with this quest for “smooth” is that unless the distiller is trying to render textbook neutral, the finished spirit very much lacks complexity. Further downstream, barrel aging then produces a finished spirit that is ever so one-dimensional.

Now if you are the type of consumer that enjoys or prefers a whiskey and coke, or a rum and coke then perhaps this tact suits you just fine? And that’s fine. There is absolutely nothing wrong with liking what you like. Heck, I like ketchup on my eggs, liver & onions and even more, secretly don’t really mind pineapple & Canadian bacon on my pizza.

• The evolution of the distiller’s sensory awareness skills eventually progresses to the point where he/she will start to question why his (or her) spirit seems to be lacking.
• Indeed, nowhere near the tasting notes of whiskey or rums coming out of some of the more well-established distilleries.
• One even starts to realize that some of the lesser established distilleries are making better spirits as well.

That can be a kick in the pills aye? There are a lot of variables to making a good spirit. Mash bill, yeast strain, fermentation temps, distillation technique, barrel aging, and blending. Each of those steps mentioned also has a subset list of variables, but the distillation technique is definitely a major part of the equation.

The progression continues along, and the distiller slowly starts to gain confidence that dipping his toe into either end of the center cut is ok. An incremental move toward the dark side! As with many things, less can be more. This is true in cooking, right? Too much sugar. Too much salt, too much pepper can be off-putting.

And yet food tastes better when correctly seasoned. The goal here is to install just enough flavor components to not overwhelm. But rather enhance. The same analogy is true for proper cocktails and therefore also true for spirits. Naturally, the above comment is indeed wide open for interpretation since not everyone has the same tolerance for moving too far North or South of insipid.

Start slowly by adding back small volumes of distillate that typically wouldn’t make the center cut on your old strict way of identifying your keeper, smooth spirit. As always, utilize your sensory awareness team for feedback. And most importantly it is critical to remember that cut points are not a fixed metric.

Not every distiller determines where cuts are made in the same way. Especially when each is running different types of stills and processing different types of beer or wine. Whether you are making moonshine, vodka, or Armagnac, each process will surely have different cut points according to the interpretation of the distiller.

And finally, you have to be willing to admit to yourself when pushing just a bit too far. Don’t get trapped into sunk cost fallacy thinking because you’ve put in so much work, have grown impatient, and just want to get it in the bottle. Now I know what you all are thinking. In the first blog about making cuts “you told me to cut clean”.

And in this blog “you’re telling me to loosen up and cut a little dirty”. Yes, I know. It can be confusing. But look at it this way, Picasso first learned to draw and paint more anatomically accurate pieces of artwork. As time passed, however, his artwork became less symmetrical, more complex, and more open to interpretation.

Does moonshine go bad with age?

So you’ve found a bottle of moonshine from yesteryear. Is it still fit to drink? This is a question I’ve asked myself recently. I heard different things coming from different sources, so I decided to do a little research on my own, and here’s the answer.

• So, does moonshine go bad? In short, moonshine, like other plain spirits, does not really go bad.
• This means moonshine has an indefinite shelf life, unless you are dealing with a flavored option (which can spoil as a result of its high sugar density).
• Coming up, I’ll go over everything you need to know about moonshine and its shelf life so you can get the most out of your spirits.

Keep reading to find out if your moonshine is still good (or whether you should just chuck it!).

What percentage of alcohol is heads?

Distilling Hearts & Tails – Foreshots NOTE: You should only use this alcohol as fuel or cleaner. Do not consume this part of your run! The first 5% or so of your run will consist of the fore shots. This 5% contains methanol. Generally, as a standard practice, you would throw out the first 250 ml per 20 liters as this part of your run will consist of these fore shots.

1. However, since we’ll be using this alcohol as a sanitizer/disinfectant product instead of a consumable spirit, you should keep them.
2. Good rule of thumb is between 5ml/l wash to 10ml/l of you wash.
3. The alcohols found in the fore shots and heads work great as strong cleaning agents, fire starters, de-greasers, and solvents.

Again, DO NOT consume these because they are toxic and will poison you and/or make you blind. Heads Next, comes the part of the distillate known as the heads. The heads make up 30% percent of your alcohol run. As mentioned above, you will find lots of different volatile alcohols in the heads of your run.

1. One of the particularly volatile staples of the heads is known as Acetone.
2. Acetone has a very distinct and solvent-like smell, making its identification easy to recognize.
3. Just like the fore shots, you’ll want to isolate these and use them as strong household cleaning agents and solvents.
4. These are NOT for using on your skin.

NOTE: A great way of isolating both the fore shots and heads in your run is to bring your still to around 75 °C and keep it there for around 10 minutes. The alcohol produced during this duration will consist of only fore shots and heads. Once the condenser stops producing at 75 °C, you’ll know that you’ve collected all of the more volatile alcohols that make up the fore shots and heads of the run.

Hearts The next 30% of your run will be the sweet spot of your alcohol run, known as the hearts. You’ll want to raise the temperature of your still to 80 °C to 82 °C range to start collecting this portion of your distillate. As you get into the hearts portion of your run, you should notice that the solvent smell of acetone tapers off and is replaced with a sweet-smelling ethanol alcohol.

This is where practice makes perfect. In order to maximize high-quality hearts, you’ll need to focus. You should be able to recognize the hearts by their sweet and neutral flavor. Taste just a bit of the distillate on your finger. The main giveaway is the sweet/smooth taste of ethanol.

1. If you can identify where the acetone stops and the ethanol alcohols begin, you will be able to maximize the total amount of viable alcohol that you can use as sanitizer or disinfectant.
2. Tails The last 35% of your alcohol run is made up of the tails.
3. You can recognize the tails by sight, smell, and taste.

You’ll see an oily film start to collect on the top of the distillate and be able to smell/taste a burnt type of flavor. The tails contain protein and carbohydrates from the wash that you don’t want in your final product. Be sure to keep your tails because you can run them again as their own wash in the future to pull out a bit more useful product.

How much heads to throw out?

Are you planning on doing stripping runs or only spirit runs? Stripping Run A stripping run is the best way to remove water from within the wash. Simply fill the still with wash and run the still hot and fast. Collect everything into one large collection container.

Once there are multiple stripping runs saved, they can be added to a still and run as a spirit run. Think of the stripping run as nothing more than an alcohol concentration step: you can get a larger, more refined spirit if you do a stripping run. Stripping is usually achieved via the use of a pot still, but can be done with a de-tuned reflux still.

Running a pot still as quickly as possible will extract as much alcohol from your wash as possible. The distillate collected is called low wines. The low wines of several stripping runs are then collected and a spirit run is done. Spirit Run Spirit runs are used to distill low wines produced from a stripping run or from a single run in a pot still.

1. A spirit run is used to separate the heads, hearts and tails for the final spirit, called the spirit run.
2. A spirit run takes a lot more time than a stripping run.
3. Foreshots Foreshots are the first vapors to boil off during distillation.
4. They should not be ingested as they contain methanol and other volatile alcohols.

Always discard the foreshots — they make up around 5% or less of the product collected during a run. Throw out the first 30 ml on a 1 gallon run, the first 150 ml on a 5 gallon run, or the first 300 ml on a 10 gallon run. Heads Heads come off of the still directly after the foreshots.

1. Simply put, they taste and smell bad.
2. Heads smell like paint thinner or solvent.
3. They are not worth drinking and are said to be the main culprit in hangovers.
4. Hearts Hearts come off the still after the heads.
5. The hearts are the sweet spot during the run: This is the good stuff.
6. The easiest way to tell when you’ve reached the hearts is simple: The harshness of the heads is replaced with a mellow, sweet-tasting flavor.

Once that harshness of the heads fades away, you know you are in the hearts. The heart cut is very important and this is where the skill of the distiller comes into play, because they must recognize the end of the heads, and the beginning of the tails.

Tails Tails come off the still following the hearts. The tails start once all of the lower boiling point alcohols have evaporated. The tails contain a lot of fusel oil and other alcohols that are not desirable in a finished product. The tails are mostly water, proteins, and carbohydrates and do not taste very good.

The tails start once the rich full flavors from the hearts taper off and start tasting thin. The tails make up between 20-30% of the run.

Can you drink the heads of distilling?

Heads – During distillation, the mash is heated in the still, causing the liquids to turn to vapor. Because alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature than water, the first thing that comes off the still is methanol, commonly referred to as the “foreshots” or the “heads.” Back when I worked for a moonshine brand, people would ask me, “Doesn’t moonshine make you go blind?” Like all tall tales, there is a bit of truth there.

• The heads portion of the distillate comprises mostly methanol, and consuming methanol can lead to blindness and even death.
• So inexperienced whiskey makers can indeed create lethal cocktails — albeit unintentionally.
• We have even heard stories about Prohibition-era bootleggers and moonshiners purposefully sending batches of heads to bars that hadn’t paid for their last shipment.

The concentrated methanol killed every customer in the bar that day, sending a very serious message to the bar owner. In the world of whiskeys you can legally purchase, the heads section is always cut out.

What to do with heads and tails moonshine?

What Happens to Whiskey Heads and Tails? image via Margarett Waterbury Most people know that distillers when they’re making whiskey, which separates the good parts of the spirit from the poisonous and/or unappealingly flavored portions. But have you ever wondered what distillers actually do with the unused heads and tails? First, know that there’s no single, agreed-upon moment to make heads and tails cuts.

Distillers make cuts differently depending on their equipment and the style of whiskey they’re making. A whiskey that’s intended to be bottled and consumed relatively young, like American craft whiskey, might benefit from tighter heads and tails cuts to produce a very clean-tasting distillate. A whisky intended for long aging, however, like a Scotch, might benefit from a looser set of cuts, because long oak maturation can transform the heavy, funky flavors in tails into richness, complexity, and a satisfying mouth feel.

There is one style of distilling where traditional cuts aren’t used: column still distillation, which are the stills used to make bourbon and some Canadian whiskies. Column stills, which can be operated continuously, have a continuous takeoff process that sections heads, hearts, and tails simultaneously.

• Ultimately, though, most distillers are left with some portion of volatile, methanol-containing heads, and funky, vegetal-tasting tails.
• Some distilleries discard the whiskey heads and tails but many municipalities require onsite remediation before dumping them down the drain.
• Many other distilleries recycle the whiskey heads and tails by adding them to the next batch of fermenting mash.

In addition to funky, solventy stuff we don’t want to drink, there’s plenty of desirable ethanol mixed into the heads and tails, so re-distilling them allows distilleries to maximize yield. Some distillers also find this improves the flavor of the final product, particularly if the tails are recycled ( at Scotch distilleries).

Can you drink the heads from the still?

You can drink them, but you shouldn’t. Heads are mostly toxic, volatile solvents (acetone, methanol, xylene, toluene), which are separated and sold for industrial uses (like for removing paint or cleaning your carburetor!).