distilling

yeast’s Role Yeast, a single-celled organism that multiplies vigorously when exposed to oxygen, plays an essential part in fermentation prior to distillation. After using up all available oxygen, yeast converts sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide–without this biological process we would never be able to produce alcoholic beverages or even ethanol fuel!

While oak maturation plays a part in shaping the flavor profile of spirits, fermentation of simple sugars into ethanol and other metabolites has an outsized influence on their character. The yeast used during this step plays a pivotal role in controlling aroma intensity (the intensity of each individual odour perceived within a sample) and ester concentrations – two components which contribute significantly to overall flavor profiles in finished spirits.

As such, distillers dedicate considerable resources and effort into finding suitable strains of yeast for their products. Different yeast strains have different methods for breaking down sugars present in mashes into various flavors compounds and other substances, leading to different flavor compounds being released from them.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast, used in ordinary bread baking, breaks down sugar into carbon dioxide and ethanol used to fortify foods and drinks. Unfortunately, high alcohol levels cause this strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to die off prematurely, producing unpleasant flavour congeners – so distillers typically utilize other strains of Saccharomyces such as beer yeast varieties, wine varieties or fruit turbo variants for spirit making.

Whiskey, gin, or vodka distilling starts with fermented alcohol which starts its life as a wash. Although many spirits share similar ingredients and processes, each requires specific alcoholic distillation techniques in order to achieve signature flavors. Distillation requires selecting congeners (aldehydes, acids, esters) carefully in order to extract these signature flavors without eliminating those you don’t want.

After fermentation is complete, wash is taken to a still where it’s heated to turn alcohol in to vapor form. From there it travels upwards through its Swan Neck/Lyne Arm into a condenser where it returns back into liquid form – this ratio determines both product purity and energy requirements. It’s referred to as the Reflux Ratio.

Distillation continues until a desired proof is reached, at which point it’s time for blending, an often artful process that depends on experience, scent and taste, intuition and experience. Each distillery decides when and how much of the distillate should be cut back depending on taste, experience and intuition of their distiller – this decision being called the art of blending – which also determines when cuts should be made on run portions to be kept and which can be let go as part of this art form. Depending on what type of still it uses timing will do this, while for column stills position will do just this job.”