Spirits

In some of our publications we have used the word spirits and some people have asked what are spirits, that is why we have decided to talk about this topic today, to answer some questions like: Why are they called spirits? When were they discovered? And what are the main spirits?

It is called spirits to all those that comply with two rules, the first it is an alcoholic drink produced by distillation of grains, among the most used are wheat, agave, rice, corn, potatoes, grapes among others and second is that it goes through a distillation process. The distillation process purifies the liquid and removes diluting components like water, for the purpose of increasing it proportion of alcohol content to make this occur it consists of heat, then cooling them, capturing them and making them liquid.

In conclusion, the distillation of spirits is the separation of alcohols that are in a liquid that previously had a fermentation and its main input was one or more agricultural products.      

The existing alcohols are methanol, propanol, ethanol and glycerol all with different boiling points, the separation is carried in three stages head, heart and tails. Bad types of alcohol as they are commonly known remain in the heads and tails, leaving the heart which can be considered to the part that makes the spirit. It will depend on each spirit and the regulations of each country which alcoholic degree the final product must have, most of the time it must be mixed with double distilled water to reach the desired alcohol level.

The spirits have their origin in Arabia in the year 1000 when some alchemists discovered that by separating the alcohols they could obtain a drink with better properties, it is not known exactly what was the input they used, however the drink with higher qualities was used for therapeutic purposes, it was said that it was able to revive the spirit of the people so it is also known as a spirit. It is worth mentioning that before this the distillation process was already used by the Chinese to obtain components that were based on the rice and by the Egyptians to obtain substances from plants and flowers.      

There is a large number of distilled beverages in the world, one could say that each country has its own or its own, but among the most popular are tequila, mezcal, whiskey, whiskey, cachaca, brandy, soju, vodka, rum, spirits, cognac among many more, each with a great history and process.

By Barriles la Arboleda