distilled spirit

distilled spirit, alcoholic beverage (such as brandy, whiskey, rum, or arrack) that is obtained by distillation from wine or other fermented fruit or plant juice or from a starchy material (such as various grains) that has first been brewed. The alcoholic content of distilled liquor is higher than that of beer or wine.

The production of distilled spirits is based upon fermentation, the natural process of decomposition of organic materials containing carbohydrates. It occurs in nature whenever the two necessary ingredients, carbohydrate and yeast, are available. Yeast is a vegetative microorganism that lives and multiplies in media containing carbohydrates—particularly simple sugars. It has been found throughout the world, including frozen areas and deserts.

Distilled spirits are all alcoholic beverages in which the concentration of ethyl alcohol has been increased above that of the original fermented mixture by a method called distillation. The principle of alcoholic distillation is based upon the different boiling points of alcohol (78.5 °C, or 173.3 °F) and water (100 °C, or 212 °F). If a liquid containing ethyl alcohol is heated to a temperature above 78.5 °C but below 100 °C and the vapour coming off the liquid is condensed, the condensate will have a higher alcohol concentration, or strength.

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History of distilling

Because the two ingredients necessary to alcoholic fermentation are widely spread and always appear together, civilizations in almost every part of the world developed some form of alcoholic beverage very early in their history. The Chinese were distilling a beverage from rice beer by 800 bce, and arrack was distilled in the East Indies from sugarcane and rice. The Arabs developed a distillation method that was used to produce a distilled beverage from wine. Greek philosophers reported a crude distillation method. The Romans apparently produced distilled beverages, although no references concerning them are found in writings before 100 ce. Production of distilled spirits was reported in Britain before the Roman conquest. Spain, France, and the rest of western Europe probably produced distilled spirits at an earlier date, but production was apparently limited until the 8th century, after contact with the Arabs.

The first distilled spirits were made from sugar-based materials, primarily grapes and honey to make grape brandy and distilled mead, respectively. The earliest use of starchy grains to produce distilled spirits is not known, but their use certainly dates from the Middle Ages. Some government control dates from the 17th century. As production methods improved and volume increased, the distilled spirits industry became an important source of revenue. Rigid controls were often imposed on both production and sale of the liquor.

The earliest stills were composed simply of a heated closed container, a condenser, and a receptacle to receive the condensate. These evolved into the pot still, which is still in use, particularly for making malt whiskeys and some gins. The next refinement was heating the alcohol-containing liquid in a column made up of a series of vaporization chambers stacked on top of one another. By the early 19th century large-scale continuous stills, very similar to those used in the industry today, were operating in France and England. In 1831 the Irishman Aeneas Coffey designed such a still, which consisted of two columns in series.

Since distillation requires that the liquid portion of a fermentation mixture be vaporized, considerable heat must be applied to the process. The fuel used in distilling spirits has always been that which has been most readily available at the particular time and place. Peat, coal, and wood were the fuels used historically, while the fuels of choice today are coal, natural gas, and oil. The high steam requirement for continuous-still operation inhibited the development of rectifying columns for production of spirits until after the Industrial Revolution.

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Many of the minor components of distilled spirits, which are present only in parts per million, are detectable by the senses of taste and smell, but efforts to identify and quantify these compounds chemically have often been hampered by the lower limits of detection by analytical methods. Classes of compounds such as aldehydes, organic acids, esters, and alcohols were easily identified by conventional methods, but many of them could not be determined until after the development of chromatography. The Russian botanist Mikhail Tsvet was an early pioneer of this measurement technique, reporting his first work in 1903. Refinements in both technique and equipment, made during the first half of the 20th century, allowed numerous flavour components in distilled spirits to be identified by gas chromatography.