Distillation Process

The Distillation Process
All spirits go through at least two procedures - fermentation and distillation. Fermentation is where all alcohol is created, distillation is where the alcohol is separated and removed. In order for fermentation to occur, two things are needed: A raw material in liquid form that contains sugar, followed by the addition of yeast. Yeast is a living organism that feeds onsugar; the bi-product of this consumption is alcohol and carbon dioxide (CO2). 

A simple formula for fermentation is: 

YEAST + SUGAR = ALCOHOL + C02 

Distilling is essentially the process whereby a liquid made of two or more parts is separated into smaller parts of desired purity by the addition and subtraction of heat from the mixture. The vapours/liquids distilled will be richer incontent than any of their ingredients that have lower boiling points. Distilled spirits are produced from agricultural raw materials such as grapes, other fruit, sugar-cane, molasses, potatoes, cereals etc. 

There are many subtleties involved in the creation of different spirits drinks but, by way of example, the process for a cereal-based spirits is as follows:
* Step 1: Milling. The rawmaterial is ground into a coarse meal. The process breaks down the protective hull covering the raw material and frees starch.
* Step 2: Mashing. The starch is converted to sugar, which is mixed with pure water and cooked. This produces a mash.
* Step 3: Fermentation. The sugar is converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide by the addition of yeast. With the addition of yeast to the sugar, the yeastmultiplies producing carbon dioxide which bubbles away and a mixture of alcohol, particles and congeners, or the elements which create flavour to each drink.
* Step 4: Distillation. The alcohol, grain particles, water and congeners are heated. The alcohol vaporises first, leaving the water, the grain particles and some of the congeners in the boiling vessel. The vaporised alcohol is thencooled or condensed, to form clear drops of distilled spirits.
Two additional steps are often taken in making some distilled spirits :
* Step 5: Ageing. Certain distilled spirits (e.g. rum, brandy, whisk(e)y) are matured in wooden casks where they gradually develop a distinctive taste, aroma and colour.
* Step 6: Blending. Some spirits go through a blending process whereby two or more spiritsof the same category are combined. This process is distinctive from mixing since the blended spirit remains of the same specific category as its components.

* Rum production begins with sugar cane. To this day, mature sugar cane is harvested by hand - grueling machete work - in many parts of the world.
* The cut cane is promptly transported to the mill where it is crushed in a machine.The crushing extracts the sugar cane juice from the fibrous pulp. The crushed pulp waste is burned to generate power to crush the cane and sometimes to heat a distillation column. Depending where you are, the pulp waste can later be burned to generate power or to heat the still.
* Now that you have the sugar cane juice, three different things can happen:
* One, you can proceed directly tofermenting and distilling the sugar cane juice. This is what they do in the French West Indies (Martinique and Guadalupe). Understandably, this most direct approach yields rum that most closely preserves the vegetal characteristics of the cane.
* Two, you can cook down and concentrate the sugar cane juice into a syrup. This syrup is itself a stable sweetening product, but the syrup can also befermented and distilled. A few distilleries work with fermented syrup, because it gives them most of the characteristics of sugar cane juice that they are looking for, while enabling them to distill all year, not just at the harvest.
* Three, you can process the juice into molasses and crystallized sugar. The crystallized sugar is sold as a sweetening product, and the molasses is sold to a...