On Mon, 09 Sep 2013 19:11:29 -0400, Tom Gardner Mars@Tacks wrote:

On 9/9/2013 6:11 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Mon, 09 Sep 2013 17:33:05 -0400, Tom Gardner Mars@Tacks wrote:

On 9/9/2013 9:10 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:

Yes, I've done it, with a fancy laboratory reflux still made of 100%
glass, distilling ethyl alcohol (you blow off the fusel oil and light
aromatics,

When I was a kid I remember my father gently shaking his new bottle of
"Kentucky Springs" Bourbon. He said it was to mix the fusel oil. Is
that true? Is fusel oil in better bourbon? (Kentucky Springs is pretty
crappy bourbon)

Fusel "oil" is actually an alcohol. It's the stuff that makes you spit
out a drink and it gives you headaches. It's bad juju.

Bootleggers and low-rent distillers run their stuff once through a pot
still. That leaves the fusel oil and some unpleasant esters in the
distilled alcohol. There are three ways to get rid of it. One is to
run it two or even three times through a pot still. The second is to
use a reflux still for the first pass, which can be as good as three
passes through a pot still.

The third is what makers of quality whiskey do: age it for 20 years in
a charred oak barrel. Whether the charcoal actually absorbs it is
controversial, but it gets rid of it somehow.


Now I remember, it was "Echo Springs", not "Kentucky Springs". Did it
probably have fusel oil in it?

If it was cheap, it probably had some.

Did dad really mix it in? Does it float
or sink?

I don't know for sure, but I think it floats. I was taught to just
keep the condenser warm, and aimed into a tin can, until the
temperature got up to the boiling temp. of ethanol. Then dump what was
in the can before hooking up cooling to the condenser and collecting
the alcohol.

My still was a piece of lab equipment that was liberated from
Princeton University by a chem-engineering friend. It had a socket on
top of the reflux column into which you stuck a precision thermometer.
It was pretty classy for making hooch, but it did the job.

I don't shake "Maker's Mark" or Jack, I sure won't touch Echo
Springs. (I probably drink a whole bottle of booze every year.)

I haven't owned a bottle for 20 years. I drink maybe two gin martinis
and one glass of scotch per year.

--
Ed Huntress