How does the sugar in grapes and other fruits become alcohol?—"By fermenting." Yes, and liquors made by fermenting are called fermented liquors. What other alcoholic drinks have you heard about beside cider, wines, beer, and ales?—"Gin, whiskey, brandy, rum." These are stronger than the fermented liquors, that is, they contain more alcohol; they are made by what is called distillation.
If you boil water, and let the steam from it fall upon a cold plate, the steam will change back into liquid and become
distilled water. Making a liquid boil, catching the vapor or steam and cooling it, is what we mean by distillation.
If two or more liquids are mixed together, the one that boils with the least heat will be drawn off first. The alcohol of beer, cider, and wines is mixed with water; it boils at a lower heat than water, so can be drawn off from it very easily. This does not make more alcohol, it only makes the alcohol stronger by separating it from the water.
When beer or any other alcoholic liquor is to be distilled, it is poured into a large copper boiler, called a still, and boiled. A tube carries the vapor from the boiler into a cask filled with cold water. This tube is coiled like a spiral line or worm through the cask; it is called the worm of the still, and the cask is the worm-tub. As the vapor passes through the tube, it cools and drops out at the end into the worm-tub, changed into a liquid stronger in alcohol than that from which it was drawn or distilled.
In this way gin is made from beer, brandy from wine, and rum from fermented molasses. These are very strong drinks, and only hard drinkers like them. But very few people begin by taking these; they first learn to like alcohol by drinking cider, beer, or wine, and end with gin, whiskey, or rum when they have become drunkards.
DEFINITIONS.
Distillation. Drawing the vapor from a boiling liquid and cooling it.
Still. Machinery for distilling; the boiler which holds the liquid.
The Worm of the Still. The tube which passes from the still to a cask, in which it coils like a worm.