Alcohol Distillation and Its Impact on Mental Cognition

Distillation is the process of extracting alcohol from water in alcoholic beverages by heating a mixture, known as a wash, until ethanol evaporates away leaving behind water that requires additional energy for evaporation. This cycle continues until enough alcohol resides in its vapor phase that it significantly exceeds that present in its liquid phase; ultimately leaving a product that contains only alcohol with minimal moisture content.

Ethanol has a lower boiling point than water, so distillation relies on evaporation to separate it. A small proportion of ethanol vapor also contains low boiling point compounds like carboxylic acids, esters and aldehydes called faints which add fragrance and aroma. If they remain in the final product they can cause blindness by coming in contact with optic nerves causing permanent damage resulting in blindness.

Distillers must employ significant energy in order to produce products with high alcohol contents, using water from boiling wash in order to produce ethanol vapor. In order to minimize energy usage and lower pressure by 1/10 atmosphere and remove azeotrope azeotropic interference and enable 100 percent alcohol distilling. To help achieve these goals, vacuum is often used.

Researchers have suggested that right hemisphere functions, including nonverbal information processing, are particularly susceptible to alcohol’s damaging effect (Oscar-Berman 1989). This idea has been confirmed by studies demonstrating alcoholics experiencing steeper declines on verbal rather than nonverbal tasks on IQ tests (figure 1).