Tennent's Super is a double malt beer produced in Glasgow, Scotland at the Tennent Caledonian Breweries (http://www.tennents.com/) . With its 9% alcohol content and its flavour of malted barley it was a good candidate for distillation, but surely an other very important reason for my choice has been that i like it.
We started buying 12 bottles of 33cl , for a total alcohol content of 33cl x 12 x 9% = 35,64 ethanol as 100% .
We have also computed a foreseen distillation graphic, in order to have a plan for the Head&Tails discharge and the determination of the different distillation fractions . The data sheet was obviously created by one of that we are using to design batch distillation units (for example for the production of Raki, Rum or Whiskey by using alambics) and adapted for the beer distillation and for our laboratory copper alambic.
Then we fill our alambic with beer , and with a mixer we try to discharge some of the carbon dioxide contained in the beer. In the following picture you can see the beer inside our copper alambic.
Giving heat to the alambics, temperature was kept under control by a thermometer, essential for identifying the different distillation phases. The first drop of distillate started at about T=85 °C . In the photo you can see the distillate dropping from the final copper condenser.
As the temperature rise up, different distillation fractions has been produced. For each one , Luca Cervi analyses the alcoholic strenght with a density meter .
The actual data (temperature , alcoholic strenght, volume) are recorded to be verified with the theoretical ones. Each distillation fractions has different chemical composition, and different flavours . To make a final spirit with a desired taste one have to choose percentages of each fractions to be used. For this is very important to analyse each fraction and to understand differences in flavours and tastes .
the final result of this first trial is a very flavoured spirit, with all the characteristics of the beer used . It's a great result and we are very happy of this first experiment, and we want to go deeper with this study in order to characterize each distillation fraction and to create the best mix.
In the following picture , from left to right, you can see the final selected spirit, one of the discharged fraction and a bottle of Tennent's Super ... now empty.
we will go on in studying beer distillation one of the next sunday... so if you are interested , continue following the GreenCLUB or you can also contact us at : info@greeneng.it to get more information on this process and in the necessary equipments.
