As some of you may know I dabble in the Alchemy Arts and Archaic Science and have a fairly good collection of proper tools to carry on this ancient trade. And now I have an alembic and curcubit of my very own. This is a very old design, the name is Arabic and the Mycenaeans and everyone after used them.
The above is a drawing I did for my next book and for my potter to make me a copy. The alembic is the general name for this contraption when in fact the alembic is the lid with the internal gutter and external spout and the lower part is called the curcubit.
The inside of the curcubit and alembic are glazed and the outside is not. This allows me to keep the lid wet to help condense the vapors produced from the heating of the contents of the curcubit. When it condenses, it collects in the internal gutter and out through the spout into a receiver. If you haven’t figured this out yet it is a simple still.
I have got a container of corn meal and brown sugar now warming up to produce a mash. In the mean time I was impatient and a friend of mine gave me a bottle of very bad wine. So I put it in the curcubit, put it on the hot plate [I apologize that I didn't use my charcoal brazier, just couldn't wait], soaked down a cotton towel with water and wrapped it around the alembic and turned the temperature up, it never got above 160 degrees F. Alcohol boils off at 172 degrees but at this altitude at a lower temperature.
This is the first ounce of pure alcohol out of the alembic. Now I can say that I have made ’spirits of wine’, the old term for alcohol. Of course all of the alcohol will be used for shellac thinner and for making spirit varnishes. I will be offering these for sale, please inquire.
I got some other goodies and I will post on them soon.
Stephen
Indeed — very nice.
I, too, would like to experiment with this. I am tired of the benzene in denatured alcohol.
Ken
Comment by Ken Pollard — April 4, 2010 @ 5:46 pm
Awesome!
Comment by Tico Vogt — April 4, 2010 @ 7:19 pm
If you put bad wine in the alembic and distilled out the alcohol, I’d hate to see what’s left in the curcubit when you finished.
Comment by wilbur — April 6, 2010 @ 1:34 pm
Hello, very nice work ! You have no loss of your alcohol when distilling ?
Comment by Salazius H. D. — May 26, 2010 @ 8:48 am
Ken,
I hope to have them on the market soon.
Tico,
Indeed.
Wilbur,
It wasn’t pretty.
HD,
I am sure I loose a bit, I need to get some natural gum rubber tubing and connect it to the spout and run it into the recepticle to reduce the evaporation.
Stephen
Comment by Stephen Shepherd — May 26, 2010 @ 4:08 pm
That is so cool! How pure is this alcohol?
Comment by Kleber — August 3, 2010 @ 10:55 am
Kleber,
Welcome, and I am not sure probably around 100 proof. I have several bottles that I plan on running through the alembic again, hope to get a much purer alcohol.
Stephen
Comment by Stephen Shepherd — August 3, 2010 @ 11:14 am