Making fruit brandy with a reflux still.

[PalinkaGus]

I'm sure this question has been answered before so please forgive me. I understand that using a reflux head will create flavorless hearts. However I will be making a plum brandy and would like to have as much plum flavor in the final product as possible. Does it make sense to separate out the heads (which I believe contains all of the flavor I'm looking for), collect the pure hearts and then add some of the heads back to the hearts to flavor it? Or should I just stick with a pot still?

[Azframer]

Hard to tell but if your avatar is your rig and if you can remove your condenser from column and cap it you could run it like a pot still could you not?

[punkin]

Yes, you're right about a lot of fruit flavour being in the heads. I find that with apples and such you can include a section of late heads and that airing and time will take care of some of the most volatiles and leave some flavour.

It's a delicate dance though it works ok.

You'll still get flavour through your high test, but it's more of a refined flavour than a pot. That can be desirable or not depending on your goal.

[vb]

done this before on a column. the coil was housed in a section of 3" copper pipe.
once heads were extracted in the usual way, I cut the power, removed the coil, capped the top and powered it back up.
basically I removed the heads with a column and ran the hearts out in potstill mode.

mind you I was making corn whiskey, not brandy.

[Alfred]

Minime sent a sample a while back that was made by removing heads with a column. Look here and you'll see a review and explanation of his process.

[PalinkaGus]

thank you all for your replies. By just removing the heads with the column will there be enough flavor in the hearts to tell that it's plum or should I aerate the heads and then add them back to the hearts?

[stillton]

you could also try running the feints (or only heads) in pot still to cut your desired flavors. its hard to do that with a column.