How Liquor is Made

One of the types of alcohol is great and can get us drunk fast. By being distributed by the hundreds every minute, we tend to wonder about the product known as liquor. But one of the biggest questions we will always be wondering is "how is liquor made?"

The principle of distillation was known to Ancient Romans who mastered the process. What is the precise ingredient used? In the Middle Ages, stills produced the first alcohols for wine and by the 17^th Century, ethyl alcohol came around. In the 15^th Century, the process was further refined, leading to today's Brandy, Bourbon, Coniac, and Whiskey. Dried corn nuts are the main grains in making spirits and everyday seven truck loads empty 230 tons of it, which will produce the basic ingredients for gin.

In the distillery control room, workers make the recipe, 95% corn, producing natural alcohol, and adding other grains for flavor and color. About 9 tons of corn flour and 5,000 gallons of water are turned into auto clay and cooked in live steam for 90 minutes. Enzymes then transform starch into sugar, in which the specialists add yeast, which converts the sugar to alcohol. In fermentation, which lasts 60 hours at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, action of the yeast causes bubbling that removes carbon dioxide in result nearly 80 tons of carbon dioxide are drawn off daily. Everything that operates by machine is monitored by computer constantly.

After hours of fermentation, corn oil will be visible and appear to surface by a reddish color. Fermented mush has 13% alcohol content. The next step is distillation, which condenses vapors of the mix. A 3-column distillation is the process in which is very unique and burns the compound at 185 degrees Fahrenheit, it makes ferments and is distilled by live steam to separate alcohol. Still continually monitored, it is still distilled. After the remaining grains are dry, they are mixed in the recipe in a rotating drum resulting in a product that is called a draft which is extra minerals not needed and is used to make animal feed.

To aromatize certain liquors and gins, workers add dry lemon skin, cinnamon, or coriander. Roman whiskey will be aged in 350,000 oak barrels and while they tend to age, these spirits will loose about 3% alcohol content annually through evaporation and the color darkens. When ready to draw out liquid from barrels and distribute, there is a tester that compares the new product with a present product already in the market. The testing process is very important, especially the quality of the spirits and to make sure there are never too much or too little.

After the testing, bottling begins and over 147 seven hundred-fifty milliliter bottles in spirits are filled every minute. And that is how liquor is made, a very unique, but complicating process.