MYTHBUSTERS
CHRIS MIDDLETONIssue 161 | Whisky Magazine 17COPPER LOAD OF THAT
Resources, the father of American whiskey invention
A
t the time Scottish distillers
inventively responded to
regulatory changes (previous
edition) their American whiskey
colleagues were dealing with a different
set of issues. Namely, a lack of cheap
domestic copper, different grain mashes
and adopting new steam power.
The American whiskey industry
in the mid-18th century was a
marginal business due to cheap
West Indies molasses imported for
making rum and the high prices and
availability of domestic grain. The
British Parliament’s introduction
of the Molasses Tax, leading to the
Revolutionary War, and the western
expansion of farmlands, resulted in a
major economic shift to distilling grain
spirits. In the 1820s, the east coast rum
distilleries that dominated US spirit
production were superseded by rye
and Bourbon whisky. Whisky cemented
itself as America’s preferred liquor.
During the 18th century, Britain
enjoyed a near-monopoly in the copper
βǤ
smelters in their American colonies,
and the small amount of copper
ore mined was sent to England for
processing. It wasn’t until 1814 that
ǯβ
built in Baltimore, before this, distillers
were dependent upon imported
British copper, further burdened by
duties. The average still cost as much
a hundred-acre farm, so with distilling
β
β
outlay, many communities shared the
cost, especially the high expense of
the condensing worm. For many, the
most economical and rustic distillation
technique was to hollow-out tree
trunks, used steam boilers, or even
heated rocks to boil the beer wash,
colloquially known as ‘running the
log’. By the 1790s, thousands of such
crude distilling devices were in use by
farmers across rural America. Some
log stills were granted Government
patents with the last of the log
distillers operating until the 1880s.
In Philadelphia, Samuel Latham was
βchambered wooden still in the 1780s.
In the major cities such as Philadelphia
and Baltimore, triple-chambered
stills joined traditional copper stills
β
Ǥ
Traditional small copper stills were
commonly tinplated for longevity
and remained popular with small
and homestead distillers. As larger
β
entered into whisky production to
serve the growing population, larger
capacity wooden chambered stills
became a business imperative. In the
early 19th-century over a dozen wood-
chambered steam stills were patented
from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania
and across to Kentucky. Distillers also
began adding a pipe to connect the
singling wash still to the doubler still,making a paired still where a semi-
continuous batch process raised the
proof. The 1816 Government census
reported 650 boiler stills were in use;
making whisky, apple and peach fruit
brandy and gin. Only two wood stills
exist today, and both are late 19th
century British Coffey stills built by
John Dore & Company, employing
twin continuous wood stills with
an analyser and rectifying columns.
One is in use is at the Diamond rum
distillery in Guyana, installed initially
at the Enmore Distillery. The other
pair of stills are in the Barossa Valley
Australia, mothballed in the 1990s.
The development of wooden stills
was solely due to the invention of
pressurised steam power replacing
β
engines reducing manual labour. Steam
β
by increasing throughput volumes, as
well as cost-effective in labour and fuel.
After the Civil War, wooden stills were
superseded by the copper still.
The spirit from wooden stills was
not as wholesome as a distillate from
copper stills. So most distilleries,
from Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee to the
Atlantic coast and Canada, charcoal
β
19th century to help remove unwanted
congeners. In an unregulated market,
β
β
Ǥ
β
whisky into a purer, more neutral
spirit leading to the debate on what is
whisky, where ‘pure’ meant minimal
β
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