Distilling & Fermentation

Why do we distill alcohol? Well… the simple reason is because we can! For thousands and thousands of years, humans have found ways to make alcohol. From beer, to mead, to wine, to brandy.. you name it, we’ll create it. Why is distilling important though? Simply put, distilling allows for longevity and we’ve been finding ways of allowing our created spirits to have longer lives by adding roots, seeds, berries, and a variety of other products for as long as alcohol has existed.

You can’t talk about distillation without talking about fermentation. Why’s that? Well, all distilled spirits either start out as beer or wine! Yup, that’s right!

Both beer and wine are the product of a magical creature, yeast, which eats sugar in grapes, grains, and other products, and then leaves behind alcohol and carbon dioxide (CO2). In beer, we leave that CO2 inside - this is what gives us the bubbles that we’re looking for. In wine, we let those bubbles dissipate (unless of course we’re making sparkling wines).

After the beer or wine has fermented, we’ll place them into the still and start the process of distillation where alcohol, water, and organic products are separated with the addition of heat.

By definition, distilling is the process through which heat is applied in order to separate alcohol from water. This creates alcohol vapor as it boils off. We then cool that vapor which creates condensation. That newly created liquid is what we call liquor.

Now of course, that’s not the final step. Right now, all you have is pure alcohol - we haven’t created a quality spirit yet that’s suitable for drinking. You know those stories about going blind from drinking? Well that’s because they were drinking the poisonous parts of alcohol. Distillers practice for years about how to select the best alcohol coming off of the still (where we boil the water and collect the alcohol vapor!) You can see the different types of stills used in alcohol production below.

This process is known as collecting the hearts of the spirit. When the alcohol is coming out of the still, there are three main parts to pay attention to: The heads, the hearts, and the tails. The heads are what come out first, these are high in toxic alcoholic components. The hearts, which come out second, make up all of the good stuff that give alcohol the desired flavor that you get to enjoy. The tails, which come out at the end, are the full of oils and heavy organic compounds. It’s the job of the master distiller to determine where to make the “cuts” between the heads, tails, and hearts, to create the best possible flavor for the spirit that they’re trying to create.