[IAmBroom]

> A small pattern I'm noticing in your description is the presence of sugar in the distillation inputs. Assume I know nothing about distillation; is that relevant?

Sugar should be completely removed by a proper distillation setup (although a lazy setup can allow some "contamination" with sugars).

[hansvm]

Yes, but distillation involves heat, and I'm curious if possibly the sugar reacts with anything to cause different aromatics or something, or perhaps fermentations stopping at higher sugar concentrations have a better aromatic profile for distillation even when the raw material is sub-par.