Topic 13: The hard stuff courtesy of John Barleycorn 

Wine vs Hard liquor boils down to this: Fermentation means low alcohol, distillation means high alcohol--The maximum alcohol percentage possible with fermentation is about 18%, which then kills the yeast.  Dead yeast means no more ethanol.  Hard liquor has a much higher percentage alcohol, up to 100%, which is achieved by distillation, in a still, which gets rid of the water, keeps the ethanol. 

 Stills are simple things, but are first associated with a complex medieval philosophy called Alchemy, not with making moonshine.  The still may have actually been invented in Baghdad by Jabir, in the 700s. What made him do it?  We will see in a minute.

 What is Alchemy--Alchemy is part of an elaborate culture that later gave way to science.   Webster defines Alchemy as  a "medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold, the discovery of a universal cure for disease and the discovery of  a means of indefinitely prolonging life". 

 Alchemy and stills--The idea behind alchemy was to purify the soul and therefore be able to reach God. If you are not pure you can not reach God, since you would be anathema. In one respect alchemy is a techno-religion because of its emphasis on sophisticated (for the time) technology rather than strictly personal behavior and values as a way to reach God. 

 How to purify the soul?  Distillation.     They believed you purify your soul by studying nature through distillation and creating things through distillation that purify one.  As you can see the alchemists were very big on distillation both as a metaphor and as a laboratory process.  They believed the process would distill and purify the soul to a state of spiritual perfection if only they could find the  magical substance called the "Philosopher’s Stone".  With such a stone they could turn base metals like lead into gold.  When taken internally, the Stone would erase age, cure disease and yield immortality to the taker. 

 Jabir (721-776) tried to produce gold, and in the process invented the still for the Arab world (the Chinese may already have had it) which became called the alembic.  This bit of technology happened during the “dark ages”, which were only dark in the Christian world, not the Arab one, where math, philosophy, engineering, horticulture, art and literature were flourishing.  Other Arab alchemists distilled the essences of flowers, leaves and grasses developing the first perfumes and food flavorings.    

 Still technology steadily improved for five hundred years following Jabir culminating in the 1300s when the Europeans learned how to distill pure alcohol.   First they made grape brandy from wine.  They kept redistilling wine vapors until they got an "irreducible essence" and called it "the spirit of life" or the "water of life"; aqua vitae. The Scandinavian word is aquavit. 

 Liquor words--All  hard liquor related words come from the alchemists, just like all tea words come from the Chinese.    The word “whiskey” comes from the Irish tonic and hangover cure called "uisgebeatha", meaning water of life. 

 Freeze-distillation--Fruit brandies were big in the colonies, especially Applejack from NJ, which was distilled by "freeze-distillation".  Apple juice is fermented in a barrel    left outdoors all winter.  The ice was removed from the top of the barrel, which floated because it is lighter than alcohol.  Water was lost, alcohol percentage rose, to such high levels that two drinks induced "apple palsy".  Drunkenness was a big problem in the Colonies and the American West, there being a shortage of other diversions. 

  Whiskey--It’s made from fermented corn, wheat, barley malt or rye malt mixed in  various proportions.  The grains for whiskey are fermented by yeasts just like beer, but then the grain broth is distilled to concentrate the alcohol. 

 Distillation depends on different boiling points of water (100 C) and ethyl alcohol (78.5 C).  If  a liquid containing both water and alcohol is heated to a temperature above 78.5 but below 100 C only the alcohol will vaporize. These vapors can then be collected and condensed yielding a much higher alcohol concentration.  In addition to the alcohol, a number of other compounds with low boiling points will come through the distillation process and flavor the spirit. 

 Proof units--Proof means alcohol content, and one proof unit is equal to 0.5% alcohol.  50% alcohol is 100 proof.  100% ethanol is 200 proof.  The concept of “Proof” derives from an old low tech way of determining alcohol percentage, invented by people with access to gunpowder.  The same volume of  whiskey and gunpowder were mixed together and lit.  If the mixture flashed up, or so of exploded,  the whiskey was too strong, there was too much alcohol, which burned together with the gunpowder.  If it did not light, it was too weak.  Slow even burning meant  it  proved out, and  the whiskey was 100% perfect or 100% proof perfect.  This turned out to be just about 50% alcohol +/- 3%.

 Stills only have four things: cooker, worm,  cold and warm water.

 How to distill like a Tennessee moonshiner: Fill the cooker with fermented mash and seal that baby up tight.  Light a fire underneath, which heats the mash and causes the  alcohol to boil off and enter the "worm", made of coiled copper tubing sticking out of the cooker, Why the copper worm?  Because it loses heat especially fast, and is easy to bend and work.  Paul Revere had a worm monopoly at one time.  Be sure to stick the worm in cold running water  to condense the alcohol, which then drips out into your jug.  All done? Feed the mash to the pigs and watch them get drunk. 

 Moonshining is making liquor illegally to avoid taxes, which came here from Scotland and Ireland via immigrants trying to escape liquor taxation in Britain .  They ended up in the mountains of western Pennsylvania known as Appalachia carrying with them the art of moonshining and a hatred of excise taxes.  These Scotch-Irish  were Washington 's favorite troops, The First Foot Regiment of the Continental Army.  Washington spent thirty four pounds for alcoholic refreshments for the voters, which helped him win, since his rival James Madison spent nothing and lost.

 After Independence the US was poor and that nasty old  Alexander Hamilton invented an excise tax on alcohol, which was not well received by the cash poor mountaineers who made whiskey and traded it for other stuff, leading to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794.

  Rye Whiskey: Start by malting rye.  This is done by germinating the seeds that activates the enzymes like amylase, the enzyme that makes starches into sugars.  Add yeast to ferment  the mash to alcohol.  Add the mash to the cooker,  distill  to yield whiskey.  Whiskey develops color   in wooden barrels by combining with compounds from the barrels.

Nowadays more whiskey is made from barley than rye, but the reverse was true back in the Colonies, because they saved their barley for beer.  Barley makes more whiskey because it makes more amylase, which converts more starch to sugar.  More sugar means more alcohol.

 Scotch whiskey: The first whiskey came from Scotland in 1494.  Scotch whiskeys are light colored and smoky flavored.  The big deal here is that they are from malt heated over a peat fire.  Peat is a dried moss found in the bogs of Scotland .  The  smoke of the peat  flavors the malt.  The fermented mash is distilled to  70% alcohol,  then diluted to 43% alcohol. 

Bourbon: This is whiskey made from corn mash, popular in the  South and on the western frontier.  Why corn, not rye?  Too warm for rye in Kentucky , where  Baptist   Rev. Elijah Craig who ran an establishment in Bourbon County Kentucky.  Many of the clergy were so employed.  Producing and drinking alcohol was not looked upon as sinful.  Drunkenness however, was not tolerated.  A man had to know how to hold his likker. 

 To make bourbon, soak some corn meal, heat it to break open the starch containing cells, then  cool  and add malting enzymes from another grain, which make sugar, then ferment; be sure to add some old mash for yeast.  Sour mash is made by adding some sour old mash; sweet mash is made by adding new mash. After fermentation, distill, and age in white oak barrels

 The most famous Kentucky Bourbon is Jim Beam, after James Beam who moved from North Carolina to Kentucky in the late 1700s.

 All Cognacs are brandy, but not all brandy is Cognac --Brandy is made from any distilled white grape wine  that is then aged  5 to 50 years.  The wine is distilled twice, once to 25% alcohol, and again to 70% alcohol, then aged, and alcohol % drops to about 40% and the rich color and flavor develops.  Cognac   only refers to brandies made in the French district of Cognac

 Liqueurs start out with brandy and then more things are added, like flavors and lots of sugar.  You end up with thick, sweet high alcohol things like Cointreau, Creme de Menthe and Grand Marnier.  They burn well when lighted because of all the sugar and alcohol..

 Rum:  Rum was the most popular liquor in the Colonies, early on.  It is made from molasses, the end products of making cane sugar.  Black strap molasses has rum and molasses mixed.  Stonewall has fermented apple juice and rum.  To make rum you take molasses and ferment it, so the sugar is turned to alcohol.  Then distill it.  Rum originated in the West Indies about 1650.   African slaves were  traded to sugar cane producers in the West Indies for molasses,  was taken to New England , and made into rum.. The slaves helped make more sugar cane.  The rum was then traded to Africa for more slaves.

 Unaged Spirits: gin--Start by fermenting some grain, make a beer, then distill it and filter, so nearly pure alcohol is achieved, to about 95%. To make gin soak some juniper berries for a couple weeks, and distill again.  Maybe you want to add some coriander seeds and citrus peels.   

Vodkas are made from fermented grain, potatoes or sugar beets and may have caraway seeds, sorrel or other herbs added.  There is no significant difference in the taste of potato or sugar beet vodka, since all that is left is the alcohol.

 Pulque and tequila: For centuries, Mexicans have made an alcoholic beverage from the Agave cactus.  The cactus was gouged just below the base of the flower bud.  From this injury a golden sugary sap was collected.  When this was fermented, it formed a beer of about 6-8% alcohol known as "pulque".  When the Spanish introduced stills into Mexico , the people began to ferment the pulque into another beverage named after the town where it was first made, Tequila.