Alcohol Distillation and Its Impact on Regional Identity

Distillation is the process by which yeast consumes sugar to produce CO2 and alcohols, with distillation being the separation process whereby these alcohols are separated based on their boiling points into concentrated “distillate”. Distillation does not produce any actual ethanol; rather, it just separates out parts of liquid with different boiling points which contain different flavour compounds known as congeners that contribute flavor profiles unique to spirits. They exist throughout every part of a distillation run (called distillation batch) so it’s up to each distiller to select which congeners remain and discard or recycle others to achieve their desired profile profile.

At distillation, an alcoholic wash is heated until it begins to steam, with this mixture of alcohol and water rising up through a still’s swan neck or lyne arm into a vaporization tube run through a condenser before returning back into liquid form through its condenser and flowing into an alcohol safe.

Spirit safes capture an alcoholic liquid known as the hearts, which contains the desired ethyl alcohol as well as various taste and aroma compounds like esters, aldehydes, acids and others. Other parts of the vapor, known as heads and tails, contain undesirable substances like acetaldehyde thought to contribute to hangovers as well as having an unpleasant odour similar to nail polish remover. A skilled distiller knows when and how to split heads and tails off from hearts in order to maximise purity of their distillate while also selecting heating curves to maximize purity by expediting output of their distillate output.