ALCOHOLIC DRINKS What is: Fermentation VS Distillation Fermentation Common fermented drinks include wine, beer, sake or cider.
Fermentation is the process where the natural sugar that’s present in
the main ingredient (glucose and fructose in grapes and apples, starch in grain…) is converted into alcohol & CO2 under the action of yeast. Whether it is a beer or a glass of wine you’re drinking, it contains yeast.
Sugar in wine is called Maltose is the term for the
Residual Sugar. fermentable sugars derived from malted grain. Yeast converts these Primary Sugars found sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. in wine grapes (fructose and glucose) The alcohol remains in the liquid but the CO2 has two ways to go:
1.) If the fermenting vessel (bottle, barrel, tank) was open then the CO2 has no choice but to go away. Resulting in a still liquid.
2.) Closed fermenter – the gas would divide itself into smaller and smaller bubbles to occupy the volume, making the liquid sparkling. DISTILLATION Common distilled drinks are all spirits (such as whiskey, gin, vodka, brandy, calvados, tequila) Distillation is going one step further.
First, you start from a fermented drink.
Step 1: The maker will start by brewing something very close to a beer, but without hops
Step 2: This liquid, once fermented, will be poured into a pot still
Step 3: The idea is to concentrate the alcohol content of the drink and get rid of the water content and of other elements. It will be heated at the very precise temperature of 78 degrees. At this stage the ethanol will evaporate ( this is the “good alcohol”)
This steam of ethanol will then be quickly cooled down in order to go back to a liquid shape. Drops are then collected and the process can be repeated to extract the purest ethanol. danger METHANOL This alcohol is extremely dangerous for health, with severe complications for drinkers. Methanol is extracted at 64 degrees. Therefore it will drip out of the pot first before the ethanol.
“One should throw both heads and tails while distilling”
That is to say what comes out first and last is not to be kept for consumption, but only the ethanol in the middle. You would need 20 litres of that beer to produce 1 litre of pure alcohol (100% ABV).
To produce whiskey, usually labelled at 40% ABV,
the pure alcohol would be watered down to reduce its strength by more than half.
