The sugary liquid (called wash or distiller's beer) is fermented and distilled (a process of heating the wash to vaporize the alcohol, then cooling it so the gas condenses and forms clear drops of distilled spirit).
This is distiller's beer, and doesn't really taste good at all.
The next step is to take the distiller's beer and run it through a still, which is the stainless steel boiling kettle with a copper helmet and condenser attached.
Pot still distillation, the original method that made small volumes of spirits in individual batches, was the sole style of distillation until an Edinburgh distiller named Stein suddenly thought in the early 1820s, Maybe theres another process, a more modern and less labor-intensive way to distill grain beers into high-alcohol spirits.
"Growing up in a distilling family, learning about everything that is distilled, I knew whiskey is distilled from beer," said Marko Karakasevic, Charbay's master distiller.
"It would be like requiring liquor stores to distill their own beer.
Her husband brews his own beer and distills spirits.
The stills are being used by another distillery, the site has been sold off, and the ex-master distiller in now making beer; it would take a whole lot to resurrect the brand.
After over 250 years in the spirits and beer business, Diageo, the world's largest distiller, made its first investment in a non-alcoholic drinks company.
"But, hey, why not just try to start with a different beer?" That is, instead of using a barely drinkable wash, distill a fully fashioned brew.
"I've been studying beer since I was 16 years old," said Chip Tate, the master distiller at Balcones (pronounced bal-CONE-ays), who worked as a brewmaster before co-founding the distillery.
