Liquor

Spirits redirects here. For other uses of the word, see spirit (disambiguation).

Liquor redirects here. For the cartoon character, see George Liquor.

Various distilled beverages in a Spanish bar

A distilled beverage, also called spirits or liquor, is a preparation for consumption containing ethyl alcohol purified by distillation from a fermented substance such as wine, malt, or grain. Distilled beverage is usually restricted to alcoholic beverages.

Background

Beer and wine are generally limited to a maximum alcohol content of about 15 percent by volume, beyond which yeast is adversely affected and cannot ferment; although in recent years high alcohol tolerant yeast strains have been used with special brewing techniques to increase this maximum up to about 23%. Alcohol levels higher than 15% have historically been obtained in a number of ways. Wine heated in an animal bladder draws out water and leaves alcohol behind (the bladder has a natural property which removes water), but there is no evidence this method was used before modern times. Another method, called freeze distillation, involves freezing the alcoholic beverage and removing water crystals, a method which has been known to have been in use in central Asia, known as the "Mongolian still", as early as the 7th century (Needham, 1980). In Europe and North America, this method was used to make applejack from cider. However the freezing method had limitations in geography and implementation and thus did not have widespread use. This leaves the method of distillation from which most of the history of potable spirits is drawn.

Distillation history

Ancient

In a basic form the technique of distillation goes back to Babylonia in the fourth millennium BC when specially shaped clay pots, it is thought, were used to extract some small amounts of distilled alcohol through natural cooling, for the manufacture of perfumes. It is unlikely this device ever played a meaningful role in the history of the development of the still. Distillation seems to have been known by alchemists in Alexandria, around the 3rd century AD, who used alcohol only for the coloring of metal and sublimation and was not widely known.

Middle East

The development of the still with cooled collector — necessary for the distillation of spirits — was an invention of Arab and Persian alchemists in the 8th or 9th centuries. In particular, Geber (Jabir Ibn Hayyan, 721–815) invented the alembic still, from which he observed heated wine released a flammable vapor, which he described as "of little use, but of great importance to science". Not much later the Al-Razi (864–930) described the distillation of alcohol and its use in medicine. By that time, distilled spirits were not just chemical products, but fairly popular beverages: the poet Abu Nuwas (d. 813) describes a wine that "has the color of rain-water but is as hot inside the ribs as a burning firebrand". The terms "alembic" and "alcohol", and possibly the metaphors "spirit" and aqua vitæ ("life-water") for the distilled product, can be traced to Middle Eastern alchemy.

Names like "life water" have continued to be the inspiration for the names of several types of beverages, like Gaelic whisky, French eaux-de-vie and possibly vodka. Also, the Scandinavian akvavit spirit gets its name from the Latin phrase aqua vitae.

Europe

Alcohol appears first in Europe in the mid 12th century among alchemists, who were more interested in medical "elixirs" than making gold from lead. It first appears under the name aqua ardens (burning water) in the Compendium Salerni from the medical school at Salerno. The recipe was written in code suggesting it was kept a secret. Taddeo Alderotti in his Consilia medicinalis refers to the "serpente" which is believed to have been the coiled tube of a still.

Paracelsus gave alcohol its modern name, taking it from the Arabic word which means "finely divided", in reference to what is done to wine. His test was to burn a spoonful without leaving any residue. Other ways of testing were to burn a cloth soaked in it without actually harming the cloth. In both cases to achieve this effect the alcohol had to have been at least 95 percent.

Claims on the origins of alcoholic beverages are controversial, often invoking national pride, but they are plausible after the 12th century when Irish whiskey, German Hausbrand and German Brandy can all be safely said to have arrived. These beverages would have had much lower alcohol content, around 40 percent, and had "universal" medicinal elixir application. After the mid 14th century, when distilled liquors were commonly applied as remedies for the Black Death, consumption of liquor rose dramatically in Europe. Around 1400 it was discovered how to distill spirits from beer and grain spirits (corn, barley, rye) and even sawdust was used to make alcohol, a much cheaper option than grapes. Thus began the "national" drinks of Europe: jenever (Belgium and the Netherlands), gin (England), schnapps (Germany), aquavit (Scandinavia), vodka (Russia and Poland), rakia (Balkans). The actual names only emerged in the 16th century but the drinks were well known.

References

• Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, V, pt.4 (1980).
• Robert Forbes, Short History of the Art of Distillation, 1948.
• Robert Multhauf, The Origins of Chemistry, 1966.

• History of Alcohol and Drinking Around the World