Taking the Heart of Brandy

edited August 2014 in General

I'm seeking a general consensus on what ABV the hearts cut is for Brandy.

After reading a few docs and searching the WWW, the info points to everything from 50-80 ABV, 55-75, 60-85, 67-82 and 74-83%ABV.

I've recently fermented a few hundred litres (~80 US gallons) of Shiraz concentrate wine. Stripped this quickly in 45L (12 Gallons) lots, and discarding the first 150-200ml - 6oz. (I won't be tossing this amount in future strip runs).

The spirit run consisted of 45L (12 Gal) using SD 2x 4" sight glasses & 2" TC pipe.
Power level was between 1700W for heads & tails & 1900W for hearts.
250ml /8.5oz Fores were taken of at 83%ABV.
1.2L /0.3 Gal Heads were run slowly & ranged from 81%-79%
Roughly 12L / 3.2Gal of 79%-67% ABV tastes quite good. The higher ABV here is floral and similar to Napolean Brandy, while the lower abv has dominant fruity flavours.
From 64%-57% ABV there is a very slight taste of tails, but the tast is still very nice.
2.25L 0.6gal (56% to 27%) were collected as tails.

All jars were aired for 2x days, but going on taste alone roughly 8% is fores/Heads, 73% is hearts and 19.4% tails.
This seems like a large cut for hearts?

What are your thoughts?

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