How Temperature Affects Alcohol Distillation

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Ethanol, which we want to capture through distillation, has a boiling point of 78.2@C while other, less desirable or even harmful substances with lower boiling points exist (like water, formic acid, acetaldehyde and fusel oils). Distillation requires boiling off certain compounds before the more desirable ethanol alcohol; otherwise they will contaminate the final spirit with unpleasant odours and flavors. These components that evaporate before reaching ethanol are commonly known as “heads or foreshots”. Tails produced after distillation are known as tails, and by diverting vapor flow away from the condenser during distillation they can be eliminated while collecting desired ethanol alcohol in bulk quantities for reuse in this fractional distillation process.

Distillation can be defined as the process of extracting ethanol from fermented liquid (the wash) while leaving behind all of the organic chemical compounds responsible for flavor (congeners). Congeners can be found throughout a run or distillation batch and it’s up to a distiller to keep any they like and discard or recycle the ones they don’t. A distiller’s skill lies in knowing which ones they like versus those which shouldn’t. In this article, we will look at how temperature impacts this separation process and how this can be altered to altering flavors profiles in spirits.