THE DISTILLATION OF ALCOHOL A Professional Guide for Amateur Distillers by John Stone & Michael Nixon Foreword Making pure ethyl alcohol at home could be a satisfying and profitable hobby for those who live in countries where it is legal to do so. Do-it-yourself types who currently enjoy making beer or wine would find it particularly interesting because it is a logical extension of both these activities. There is the same fermentation stage where sugar is turned into alcohol, but instead of drinking the brew we subject it to a very rigorous purification process. This process is fractional distillation, a scientific procedure which can be guaranteed to produce a perfect product every time - -- a crystal clear alcohol of almost pharmaceutical quality. The pure alcohol is then diluted with water to 40% and used as such (vodka), or flavoured with exotic herbs such as juniper berries, cardamom, orris root, coriander and other botanicals to give London Dry Gin. Or fruit is steeped in the alcohol to make a delicious after-dinner liqueur. This is not a hobby for everyone, but what hobby is? In the first place you would only wish to become involved if you particularly liked the beverages which are made from gin and vodka, e.g. a martini, a gin-and- tonic, a Bloody Mary, or a liqueur. Secondly, you should enjoy the challenge of constructing a scientific apparatus which involves a little plumbing and a little electrical work. The satisfactions you receive will include the knowledge that you have made something which is exceptionally pure, so pure in fact that no headaches or hangovers will ever result from drinking it. And finally there will be the pleasure derived from making a beverage which is less than one- tenth the cost of the commercial product. 2 Copies of the previous book in this series* were sent for comment to the Customs & Excise Branch of Revenue Canada in Ottawa and to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) in the United States. Both authorities agreed that it is not illegal to sell or purchase a book which deals with amateur distillation but that it is illegal to actually engage in it without a license. No doubt many other countries around the world would react similarly. The reasoning behind this law remains obscure. Distillation is simply a purification process which not only doesn’t make alcohol but is incapable of making it. Alcohol is made by fermentation, not by distillation, so it might be expected that fermentation would be the process subject to control. This is not so however ---- amateur beer- and wine-makers are free to make as much alcohol as they wish for their own use. It is abundantly clear, therefore, that the law is based upon a completely false premise. Individuals in New Zealand, Italy and several other countries already enjoy the freedom to distil alcohol at home for their own use. It is hoped that the publication of this book will eventually make it possible for amateurs in all countries to make their own vodka, gin and other spirits in the same manner that they now make beer and wine. * Footnote: "Making Gin & Vodka" by John Stone. Published in 1997 by Saguenay International. 3 Published in New Zealand in February 2000 by: Saguenay International PO Box 51-231 Pakuranga Auckland 1706 New Zealand Copyright February, 2000 by John Stone & Michael Nixon All rights reserved. No part of this publication, printed or electronic, may be reproduced or transmitted to a third party in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the authors. ISBN 0-473-06608-4 Contacts: In Canada John Stone E-mail [email protected] Tel: +1-450-451-0644 Fax: +1-450-451-7699 In New Zealand Michael Nixon E-mail [email protected] Tel: +64-9-577-4103 Fax: +64-9-577-4103 4 Table of Contents Page No. 1. Introduction …………………………………………………… 6 2. Alcoholic Beverages …………………….……………………… 9 Beer and wine Distillation --- what is it? Simple distillation --- pot stills Whisky, brandy, rum, etc. Fractional distillation Gin & vodka Health & Safety Headaches & hangovers 3. The Question Of Legality ……………………………………… 17 4. Equipment ………………………………………………………. 21 Fermenter Beer-stripper Fractional distillation apparatus The boiler The column The still-head The flavouring still 5. Fermentation ……………………………………………………. 37 Principles Procedure 6. Distillation ………………………………………………………. 41 Principles Procedures Beer-stripping Fractional distillation Collection rate Yield of pure alcohol 7. Flavouring ………………………………………….…………….. 53 Procedure 8. Summary of procedures ………………………………………… 57 9. Costs & Economics ……………………………………………… 60 10. Appendices I. Conversion factors ……………………………….…. 65 II. Activated charcoal ………………………………….. 66 III. Distillation - How it Works ………………………… 67 IV. Diode heater control ………………………………... 72 5 Introduction Innumerable books are available on the home production of beer and wine but very few on the production of distilled spirits at the small scale required by hobbyists. This book has been written in an attempt to rectify such an anomalous situation. The emphasis is on the production of vodka and gin, and there is a reason for this. It is actually simpler to produce the very pure alcohol required by these two beverages than it is to make a spirit of lesser purity such as whisky. The explanation as to why it is simpler will become apparent in the next chapter. This emphasis on complete purity should not be taken to mean that whisky, rum, brandy, etc. are excluded from the list of alcoholic drinks which could be produced — after all, every bottle in the liquor cabinet contains alcohol, the only differences between them being flavour and alcohol concentration. The emphasis on vodka and gin simply means that the primary consideration in this publication is the production of pure ethyl alcohol — C H OH. 2 5 The book should appeal to two groups of readers: 1) those who live in countries where it is legal to distil alcohol for one's own use, e.g. New Zealand and Italy, and 2) the rest of the world, including North America and most of Europe, where the irrational and arbitrary law respecting distillation by amateurs needs to be challenged. The first group will find complete details of the equipment and procedures required to ferment cane sugar to a crude 'beer' and then fractionally distil it to remove all the impurities, thereby producing a pharmaceutically pure alcohol. Instructions follow for flavouring the alcohol with juniper berries and other botanicals to give the well-known bouquet of London Dry Gin. The second group can use the same detailed information in its campaign to have the law changed. Such a campaign will only succeed if it is based upon a thorough knowledge of the subject matter, because those who embark upon it will soon realize that legislators and officials in government are completely muddled about distillation --- with what it is and what it isn't. 6 This book, therefore, must not be seen in North America and elsewhere as any sort of incitement to break the law. Not at all. It is an attempt to clarify in the minds of the general public, and in governments, the misconceptions about a simple purification process which have become rooted in society as a result of centuries of mischievous brain-washing. Armed with the facts, the public can then embark upon the formidable task of bringing common sense to bear upon the problem. A whole chapter will be devoted to this question of legality since it is highly important for everyone to know exactly where they stand and to be comfortable with what they are doing. It is hoped that legislators and law enforcement agencies themselves will read this chapter and possibly one or two others, think about it, and be prepared to be receptive when law reformers come knocking at their doors. The units of measurement to use present a problem. Most of Europe uses the metric system whereas North America, particularly the U.S., is largely non-metric. In this book, therefore, we have adopted a hybrid system in which most volumes, weights, temperatures and pressures are in metric units while most dimensions, e.g. pipe diameters, are given in inches. For convenience, a table of conversion factors from one system to the other is given in Appendix I. There is quite a bit of repetition in several of the chapters. Thus, when describing the equipment it has been necessary to describe to some extent just how it is used, even though this is dealt with at length in the chapters which deal with the procedures involved in fermentation and distillation. We make no apologies for such overlap since it helps to make the various chapters self-sufficient. Repetition of the point that distillation is simply a purification process can be excused on the grounds that repetition is not a bad thing if we wish to clear away the misinformation planted in people's minds over the years by zealots of one sort or another. In writing this description of small-scale distillation for amateurs it was difficult to decide on an appropriate amount of detail to provide. Distillation, even fractional distillation, is really a very simple process and it might have been sufficient simply to provide a bare outline of how to proceed. It was decided, however, that a knowledge of why something 7 works is as interesting to the enquiring mind as knowing how. Furthermore, it can be very useful to know the underlying principles involved in a process if something doesn't work out exactly as expected the first time you try it. It then becomes possible to solve the problem through knowledge rather than by trial-and-error. Before getting down to these details of fermentation and distillation a few general observations will be made in the next chapter on the subject of alcoholic beverages per se because they cover a very wide range of products from wines and beers to whiskies, rum, brandy, gin, etc. Comparisons will be drawn between these various products, mentioning in particular that highly purified alcohol in the form of gin and vodka is considerably less harmful to health than beer or wine, notwithstanding widely held beliefs to the contrary. 8 Alcoholic Beverages All alcoholic beverages are made by fermenting a sugar solution with yeast, a process which converts the sugar to carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol. Usually, one does not start with a pure sugar but with fruit juices for wine, the starch in grains for beer and whisky, molasses for rum, etc. Over the centuries trial and error have shown that a bewildering variety of sugar sources can be exploited in this manner, even such an unlikely substance as milk being usable because of the sugar lactose it contains. Regardless of the sugar source the alcohol is the same. In addition to the variations imposed by the source of sugar, the yeasts themselves and the conditions under which they are used also make their contribution to the character of the final product. This is because yeasts produce small quantities of other substances in addition to the main product --- ethyl alcohol. It is no wonder, therefore, that the flavour, colour, aroma and general quality of fermented beverages vary so widely and that a great deal of skill and experience is required in order to produce an acceptable beverage. No alcoholic beverage (with the possible exception of certain vodkas) consists simply of alcohol and water with no other constituent present. If it did it would be colourless, odourless and tasteless. And rather boring unless you mixed it with something which had a flavour, e.g. vermouth, tomato juice, orange juice, etc. The colour, aroma, and flavour of beers, wines and spirits are due to the other components present, components which collectively are known as "congeners". Many of these congeners are relatively harmless but there are always a few produced during fermentation, any fermentation, which are actually poisonous. Methanol (rubbing alcohol) is one of them. Surprisingly enough to those of us who have been brought up to believe the opposite, it is the congeners and not the alcohol which are responsible for headaches and hangovers following over-indulgence. More will be said about this interesting and little-known fact towards the end of the chapter. 9 Beer and wine Alcoholic beverages can be divided into two broad categories according to whether or not there is a distillation stage following fermentation. Beer and wine fall into the non-distilled category whereas whisky, rum, brandy, gin, etc. have all been distilled. The latter are often referred to as "spirits" or "hard liquor". Simple distillation removes some of the more noxious congeners produced by fermentation. Because beer and wine do not receive any such purification treatment it is necessary to live with whatever mixture of chemicals the fermentation has produced. This means in practice that beer- and wine-making must be carried out extremely carefully for, if they are not, the resulting brew could be very unpalatable. Beer- and wine-making are highly skilled occupations, more akin to gourmet cooking than to science, and involve many subtleties and many opportunities for error. Which explains why there is such a wide range of qualities and prices of wines and why amateurs have such difficulty in producing a really first-class product. Distillation --- what is it? Distillation is simply the heating of a liquid to the boiling point followed by condensing the vapours on a cold surface. To remove the hardness from water it can be boiled in a kettle and the steam which is produced condensed against a cold surface to give a pure water free of minerals and all other types of impurity. The calcium and magnesium salts which constitute the hardness remain behind in the kettle. Nature carries out her own distillation in the form of rain --- the sun evaporates water from the surface of lakes and oceans leaving salt and impurities behind. Clouds form, condense, and a close approximation to distilled water falls to earth. So distillation is not a mysterious subject, nor is it threatening. It is as commonplace as a rain-shower or a tea-kettle boiling and causing condensation on a nearby window. And as innocuous. As you can imagine, the actual practice of distillation is a little more complicated than this and later chapters will provide an exact description of the equipment required and the procedures involved in making one particular type of high-purity spirits, i.e. gin and vodka. 10