"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

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.

--
Ed Huntress (whose uncle made money bnilding pot stills for
bootleggers during Prohibition)


IIRC, I read something about making a filter with activated (charcoal or
carbon?) in a few feet of tubing, run the alcohol through a few feet of
tubing filled with activated charcoal and it was supposed to remove the
nasties.

RogerN