Blog #24 3 of 3 on Distillation – The Rise of the Column Still: A Historical Overview While pot stills shaped the soul of early spirits, the column still revolutionized the scale, purity, and consistency of whiskey production. Its story is one of industrial ingenuity meeting sensory ambition. Early Innovations: From Batch to Continuous Before the 19th century, all distillation was batch-based—slow, labor-intensive, and variable. The pot still reigned supreme, but it had limitations: each run...

Blog 23: Column Stills Explained A column (continuous) still separates a fermented wash into vapor and liquid across a tall packed or tray/plate column. The still creates repeated equilibrium stages between rising vapors and descending liquid (reflux). Each stage behaves like a mini‑distillation, progressively enriching the vapor in ethanol and selectively carrying or rejecting congeners (aroma and flavor compounds). Operators tune product character by changing the number of effective stages...

Blog # 22 – Pot Distillation – Time to consider “The Pot” Distillation can be a complex topic. I encourage you to contact me with any questions you may have.  I have chosen to cover this topic in 3 parts.  First, Pot distillation, Second Column Distillation and finally to compare the two.  Covering these topics in this order is sort of a chicken or the egg thing. I guess you could consider it historical in design. In this blog I also cover what distillation is or the rest of it is a mute...