Alcohol Distillation and Its Impact on Local Culture

Alcohol distillation has been used for millennia. Records from ancient China, Egypt and Mesopotamia indicate its widespread usage for producing perfumes, oils and balms used by mystery religions of those times to provide immortality through regular consumption of the product.

Every spirit begins as a sugary mixture known as the mash, made up primarily of grain (typically wheat or barley) but can also include fruits and potatoes. Preparing this mix involves milling and mixing grain or mashing fruit/root vegetables so that yeast has access to sugars which it then converts into alcohol.

Once yeast has converted sugars to alcohol, the liquid must be distilled in order to separate pure alcohol from other substances that make up its heads and tails. Ethanol (Ethyl alcohol) serves as the “heart” of distillation as it has strong effects on human central nervous systems while changing mood and behavior; furthermore it’s one of the oldest recreational drugs.

Distillation begins by collecting all alcohols with unpleasant or toxic odours and flavors such as propanol, butanol, amyl alcohols as well as fusel oils phenolic compounds with high boiling points that vaporize during distillation before being condensed back to liquid form for collection as ‘heads’ of distillation.