So the key to the difference between artisan whiskies and mass-produced whiskies is the type of still. That's cool. That must mean that one artisan whiskey is pretty much like another. Au contraire mon frére. The differences do not end with whether the whiskey is distilled with a columnar still, a continuous still, or a pot still. In fact, they really just begin.
Alembic pot stills are like women (or like men for those of you that prefer men), they come in as many shapes and sizes as there are imaginations. Each and everyone of them have their unique traits, characteristics, and quirks which uniquely combine to be the favorite of the person that loves and defends them over all others.
The most common still we picture when thinking about moonshiners is something akin to a large kettle with a worm-shaped coil coming out of the top. In modern times these are made from anything from stainless steel kettles to milk cans to pressure cookers. The process is simple. You heat the fermented mass in the kettle, the steam collects in the condenser tube, and the distillate drips out the other end. Quick and efficient, by pot still standards.
The problem is, quick and easy is not the road to a good whiskey, or any other distilled spirit. Simply, if you want quick and easy, get a columnar still and at least make it as quick and efficient as you possibly can. But if you want the full symphony of flavors in your whiskey, you need to step it up a notch from the simple kettle-type pot still. This is where we start seeing the vast differences in pot stills and the additional onion-shaped pictured on the banner of this page.
The differences come down to reflux. Not the kind you get when you eat too much dairy, eat too many habanero peppers, or drink too much cranberry juice, although the concept is similar. While the basic process inside a pot still is heating the fermented mash until the desired alcohol evaporates off, which is then condensed in the condenser and collected in the collector, as with anything, there are many more subtle and no so subtle actions and cycles occurring within the still. The most obvious when you think about it a bit is that some of the evaporated alcohol hits the side of the still before it gets to the condenser. If the side of the still is sufficiently cool, that vapor will condense and fall back into the fermented mash. That is reflux, and in general, the more reflux you have in a still, the more purely the ethanol separates from the undesirable alcohols and other volatile ethers.
So if you ask 50 master distillers what pot still design in optimal, you likely will get at least 60 different answers. Everyone has their preferences as to how much reflux they achieve, which also is a trade off of how quickly the still will run. If you do a search of pot still images, you will find ones that resemble a typical onion shape with a neck drawn up to the condenser, but you will also find dome shaped pot stills, ones with various sized bulges in the neck, and everything in between. Each is specifically designed from experience of the master distiller to tweak the amount of reflux and thus the flavor and purity of the final distillate.
Another big variable in reflux, flavor, and purity is the angle at which the condenser comes off of the top of the still. The more steeply upward the condenser comes off the still, the more reflux will occur (the more vapor that will re-condense and fall back into the still to be re-evaporated. Similarly, condensers that slope downward as soon as they leave the still will increase the rate of production, but will result in minimal reflux. So once again, the subtle differences result in subtle differences in flavor, and the interaction between the shape of the still and the characteristics of the condenser combine to create the character and complexity of the final product.
Finally, the basic model of a alembic pot still begins with the fermented mash being heated. Even the simple act of heating the fermented mash changes the flavor and characteristic. While we traditionally think about some sort of open flame heating the bottom of the kettle (again from the images of our moonshiners), this method of heating a still is not only extremely dangerous, but also results in the introduction of burnt components into the final product. Keep in mind that the fermented mash that is inside a still is not filtered sugar water. It contains various amounts of solids that tend to settle to the bottom of the pot. As anyone that has ever cooked something on the stove knows, when things are heated on the bottom and things settle to the bottom, you must keep stirring to keep from scorching the solids in the mixture.
The same happens in a still, as the bottom heats faster than the volume of liquid inside the still, the solids in the fermented mash settle to the bottom and scorch to the bottom, then eventually burn. This decreases the heat exchange in the still, releases burnt flavors into the rest of the mixture, is very hard to clean out, and is very hard on the relatively soft metals of the still. Because of this, if the still is heated from the bottom, some method of stirring the mash is needed to keep it from burning. But still, some of the mash will "cook" more than the rest. So once again, how much cooking occurs prior to evaporation alters the flavor of the final product.
Because of the hazards of using an open flame when producing a very flammable alcohol, most distilleries today utilize either electrical induction heating coils, or steam coils inside the still to heat the fermented mash. Again, each method produces a different flavor in the final product. The higher heat of the electrical induction heating coils will heat the mash more rapidly, but you also get more cooking occurring on the hot coils. Hot steam or water are slower, but result in less cooking.
The exciting thing about all of these variables in pot still design is that there are no right or wrong designs. Each design component combines with the others to create a specific characteristic in the final distillate. Because of this, old distilleries that still utilize alembic pot stills have their replacement stills carefully crafted from the designs of their existing still to match the final characteristics as much as is possible.
So the design of the still all comes down to personal taste, which is precisely why artisan distilleries are so exciting. The quality and flavor of the final product is so incredibly variable that there quite literally is an infinite number of possible unique products that can be produced by the industry as a whole.
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