But I think it didn't work for an interesting reason.

I had accumulated heads and tails from several all-grain, barley malt runs. I combined them and diluted to 1.1 gallons with some barley malt wash I had left over, to fit my air still, which gave me right at 27% ABV. Ran it slow using a controller, 40 mls every 9-10 minutes. Same way I run my spirit runs, same volume, same ABV.

I noticed one interesting thing during the run. ABV came off higher than I expected from the start, and stayed high longer than I expected, given it has the same % ABV in the pot as my regular spirit runs. I wonder if maybe all the solvents and light alcohols from the concentrated heads in this run, were carrying ethanol over with them? Or perhaps my refractometer was measuring other alcohols?

But the other interesting thing, and the failure of this experiment, was that I didn't get any clean hearts. I got some good flavors in there, I was tracking them as the run was going on, and then spent quite a bit of time diluting to 35ish percent and tasting. That solventy heads flavor smeared down into what should have been the hearts, where they were absolutely some really wonderful flavors. And then I started picking up that grungy stick to the back of your tongue faintly nauseating tail stuff, when there was still a little bit of solventy heads flavor.

But the closest I got to hearts, was a spot in the middle where I was getting little bits of both solventy heads and ugly tails.

I mean, I expected more heads than normal. There was a lot of heads in there, and I'd already taken hearts out. But I wasn't expecting heads to smear all the way into tails.

This is my little countertop air still though. I know it doesn't do as clean a separation, and has a tendency to smear. Making clean cuts, I have consistently gotten a lower percentage of hearts out of my runs than I would expect, based on what people talk about for bigger stills.

I suspect that on a bigger "normal" still, with more of a head and lyne arm for vapor velocity, and without all those little corrugations in the cooling coils for vapor to condense into and contaminate later fractions coming across, that I might get much cleaner separation. And based on the things I could taste, it might make a really nice whiskey.

But it doesn't seem to work on the air still, and it's yet another reason I'm looking forward to setting up my larger still later this year.