This study characterised the behaviour of congeners during the mul- stage disconnuous disllaon of whisky using a Stupfler-type sll. It invesgated the influence of recycling the head and tail fracons on the composion of the unaged spirit and, for the compounds with known equilibrium data, to validate the capability of soſtware tools to simulate their behaviour during disllaon. To this end, profile curves of ethanol (% ABV) and 45 aroma compounds (mg/L) during disllaon are reported, with 27 compounds compared to simulated data using ProSim® BatchColumn soſtware. Further, the mass distribuon of each compound in the fracons of discarded head, recycled head, heart, tail and residue are esmated. Assuming that this distribuon was maintained during each disllaon, it was shown that for the wash, a pseudo-steady state was achieved in less than five disllaons with the true recovery rate of each compound in the heart assessed. This study demonstrates that during disllaon, the congeners behave according to the ethanol content of the boiling liquid in the column. It provides informaon on the separaon of volale compounds in a batch sll with a disllaon column above the heater. Addionally, the data highlights the importance to the unaged spirit of recycling the head and tail fracons. These results provide useful informaon for disllers to choose the appropriate way of collecng the heart fracon. Keywords: Batch disllaon, simulaon, whisky, volale compounds, aroma compounds Abstract Published: 06/10/2023 1 Université Paris-Saclay, INRAE, AgroParisTech, UMR SayFood, 91120 Palaiseau, France 2 Ergaster distillery, 1, Avenue du Parc F-60400 PASSEL, France marne.decloux@agroparistech.fr ORIGINAL ARTICLE © 2023 Institute of Brewing & Distilling Martine Esteban-Decloux1 Hervé Grangeon2 N’Guessan Charles Romaric Tano1 Received: 15/12/2022 Revised: 17/04/2023 jib.ibd.org.uk Accepted: 06/06/2023 DOI 10.58430/jib.v129i3.28 Behaviour of volatile compounds during batch multi-stage distillation of whisky: experimental and simulation data This is an open access arcle distributed under the terms of the creave commons aribuon-non-commercial- no-derivaves license (hp: // creavecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribuon, and reproducon in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed or built upon in any way. 192 J Inst Brew 2023,129:192-208