»Ê¹ÚÌåÓýapp

»Ê¹ÚÌåÓýapp craft of distilling alcohol is believed to have originated in the Middle East in the 11th century, reaching Ireland by the 12th century and Scotland by the 15th. »Ê¹ÚÌåÓýapp methods employed then are still, in essence, used today, and comprise:

• the preparation of a solution containing dissolved sugars from fruit or cereals;
• the conversion of the sugars into weak alcohol by fermentation with yeast; and
• the heating of the weak alcohol solution in a pot or columns to extract the alcohol vapour and subsequently condensing the vapour into a liquid.

Spirits can also be produced synthetically by catalytic conversion (cracking) of ethylene gas, a by product from the petrochemical industry. »Ê¹ÚÌåÓýapp spirits, commonly known as industrial ethanol, produced by this method are no less safe to drink than traditionally-distilled spirits, but the UK only permits the use of cereal and fruit based spirits for human consumption. As a result the use of synthetic ethanol is restricted on drinkable uses.

Other processes used to produce spirits include:

• freezing a fermented alcohol solution to obtain a rough, comparatively weak spirit from the frozen residue;
• reverse osmosis which involves ‘sievingâ€� alcohol molecules through a membrane to segregate the ethanol from other components (mainly water); and
• spinning cone / falling film evaporators, which are variants of traditional stills. »Ê¹ÚÌåÓýappse devices evaporate a continuous stream of feedstock against a spinning cone under pressure.

Reverse osmosis and evaporators are used mainly to extract alcohol from beer, wine and cider to produce low or alcohol-free beverages.