| This page is under construction. Please be patient, after
all, if you were making your own single malt whisky (illegal) you will have
to wait at least ten years for it to mature. Distillation is a way of
separating some kinds of mixtures. You can get pure water from salty water
by boiling the salty water and condensing the steam. This produces distilled
water. The piece of apparatus you need is shown below. Most science teachers
can set it up correctly, but my pet human says he has seen a chemistry
teacher get it wrong.
This is a Liebig condenser named after Justus Liebig: Baron
von Liebig: 1803 - 73. He was a German chemist who founded the study
of agricultural chemistry.
It consists of a tube surrounded by an outer tube or water
jacket. The bottom of the water jacket is connected by a rubber tube to a
cold water tap. Water runs in at the bottom and out at the top via another
rubber tube to the sink.
Steam comes in at the top of the inner tube and condenses
into water droplets at the bottom because it is cooled down by the water
jacket.
You can also separate tow liquids mixed together if they
have different boiling points. Alcohol boils at a lower temperature than
water. This means that if you boil wine, you will get alcohol vapour. When
this condenses it produces brandy (burnt wine). Your science teacher can
give you a demonstration of how this works for educational purposes, but it
is illegal to distil your own spirits. SO DON'T TRY.
Why you get brandy, whisky, gin or vodka when you distil a
liquid containing alcohol is a bit more complicated. To make brandy, you
must start with wine made by fermenting grapes. To make calvados, you must
start with an apple wine or cider. To make whisky, you must start with
fermented grain instead of fruit.
If you try to make brandy with a glass still, it won't work.
What you will get will be more like gin or vodka. To make good brandy, you
must have a still made out of beaten copper instead of glass. So get
yourself down to the builders merchants to buy some copper tubing and a
copper drum.
Actually, distilling your own spirits is quite dangerous.
Even if you are not caught by Customs and Excise you are likely to make
yourself very ill. This is because there are several different kinds of
alcohol. The alcohol most of you like to drink is called ethyl alcohol or
ethanol. This is quite poisonous, but if you don't drink too much and don't
drive when you do drink, you should be OK. Wood alcohol, also called methyl
alcohol or methanol is very much more poisonous. It can make you blind.
Propanol and butanol are even worse and if there is any in your home made
brandy you will be exceedingly ill. |
