I don’t know why I so badly wanted to distill ale into whiskey, but there I was, trying to make it happen. Perhaps because whiskey would nicely take my mind off of all the annoying suitors and ddling earls, backstabbing archbishop. With the new perseidian iron jewelry, blowing the place up was less of a concern, and I went to it. Soon, the head nurse and doctor would be joining , for a discussion of alcohols.
Looking at the apparatus I had made, I felt like Frankenstein. A large glass spherical container, the distillation flask where the ale would simr, was held by steel bands over an improvised tal oven. From the flask, a chimney of glass rose up about two feet to what looked like a clay pipe angled down and away. I’d place collecting cups to gather whatever ca out at the pipe’s tip.
Distillation has a couple problems that are difficult to deal with, given limited technology. First, the temperature has to be controlled. Ethanol boils at around 78 C (173 F), which is before water, at 100 C (212 F), but mixed together with all the impurities from ferntation, everything changes a bit. So awful stuff boils out early, acetaldehyde, then acetone, which would make for a fantastic solvent if I could isolate it, potentially helping to produce antibiotics or lysergic acid, depending on one’s goals for the night. Next, and most importantly, thanol boils slightly earlier and isopropyl a bit later. Ideally, you add heat slowly, separating out the alcohols by evaporation.
In the absence of a thermoter or any temperature asuring device, getting the right temperature was an issue. Since I couldn’t control the heat produced by the fire precisely, I decided to control the height of the flask from the oven. It was crude, but raising and lowering it allowed to eyeball the liquid and monitor the simr.
The next problem was how to condense the gas once it left solution. That was difficult. In normal distillation, you have a continuous flow of water around your vapor-exit pipes. This set up cools the gas back into liquid for collection. Easy to do with industrialized tals and rubber, and water on tap. Hard to do here. Though it was easy enough to get a large tank of water ready.
Alternatively, the pipes could be made very high – at so point, the gas will cool and condense into liquid. But how high? I had no idea. It probably irked them, but I had a couple potters work out how to build a canal through which water could flow over a pipe. These guys were clever and wrapped a rope around the glass pipe, clay on top of that, fire-hardened it, the rope was burnt out. Of course, it took a while to clear the char, but now I had a crude, semi-functional still.
The ale would simr, thanol would evaporate out first, then ethanol, then other undrinkables, water, and eventually isopropyl if I kept going. They’d condense back into liquid in the sa order, collected in cups under the spout. And these liquids were called the heads, hearts and tails. Bad stuff in the heads and tails, drinkable stuff in the hearts. In a perfect world.
This was going to take a lot of trial and error. With this crude set up, I needed to liberally define and discard the heads and tails, which decreased how much ethanol I could produce. But it was the only way to prevent organ failure.
I was eager to make it work.
***
“No, not that one!” I swatted the head doctor’s hand away from the thanol.
Head Physician Markin straightened up, all indignant, “I was just going to sll it.”
“Well, not like that. Use your palm, waft the fus over to your nose. Don’t inhale directly. And definitely do not drink it!” It was a strange sight, a young girl teaching the basics of chem class to professional healthcare workers.
“Let see if I understand.” Reese began, “You’re claiming that the ale here is made up of different, ah, liquids, and that you can separate them with this apparatus, and that so of them are poisonous?”
I smiled at my one good student, “Yes, that’s correct. They separate at different temperatures, hence the different collecting glasses.” I had twenty glasses set up under the nozzle. Since I couldn’t monitor the temperature exactly, only practice would show where the hearts were. “First cos out undrinkable stuff, then less undrinkable stuff, then drinkable stuff-”
“The glass you drink from, it’s the ‘hearts’ as you called it?”
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“Yes.” A huge part of wanted to explain how ethanol was a molecule that differed from water and thanol, but I didn’t think I’d get far that way. And, to be honest, didn’t know enough about the theory of the atom to explain how it would revolutionize their understanding of reality. Humors, we were stuck with humors.
“Where were you taught this?”
“Uhm, ah, father had a very skilled . . . alchemist?”
“Oh, I see,” said the physician. “A poisoner.”
“Is that a profession?” I was horrified.
“Certainly. Everything makes sense now. Except how you explain it. Clearly the separation of the liquids occurs as the differing humors are heated. We should really arrange for you to have an education in dicine.”
“My goal here isn’t to create poison. I an, sure, you can use the heads for cleaning. It kills germs easily enough-”
“Excuse , Germs? Who are the Germs?”
“Uh, sorry, ‘germs’ is an archaic word for ‘disease.’ What do you call it when a wound goes bad? Gets infected?”
“Well, we wouldn’t want this liquid in the body.” The doctor had an expression of disgust, “You assured us it was poisonous.”
“Yeah, it’s not for the body. Great for cleaning surfaces or, uh, de-icing locks. Tools, too. It would disinfect dical tools quite nicely.”
“Disinfect?” He tilted his head as he pondered that thought. “It may have its uses then. Does it break down oils?”
“I don’t think so, but we can test it. Soap is good for that.” I sighed. It’s a strange thing to try to explain chemistry to soone when I didn’t fully understand it myself. I didn’t know enough about solvents to explain what the various alcohols could do. Solvent stuff! Except acetone because, well, it has very specific uses in a certain subculture. In my next life, I swear, going to take chemistry more seriously to prepare for the next ti I wake up in a new universe.
“Soap,” said the doctor, “you’re always on about soap.”
“Of course she is. Soap keeps a young girl’s skin clean and healthy. Reese picked up the fourth glass down the line. “So, this one is drinkable?”
“Yes. It’s not poisonous. I an, in the conventional sense. It’s just like ale, but concentrated.”
She brought it to her mouth, “It evaporates on the lips. I feel a cooling sensation.” Reese opened her mouth to pour it in.
I quickly put my hand on hers as gently as I could to stop her, “I don’t recomnd drinking it straight. It should be mixed with water. Or it’ll hurt going down. You’ll know exactly where your throat is.”
“Hmm, are you sure it’s not poisonous?”
“Think of it this way, it was drinkable in the ale. So, it wants to be mixed with water.” I smiled inwardly, thinking I finally frad it through the humoral theory – one elent wanting to be mixed with another.
“But so were the other,” she pointed at the other glasses on the counter, “liquids you extracted.”
“Oh. Uh, yeah. Alright, I’m thinking we need a visual aid. One mont.” I went and found so paper, charcoal, and drew an ale cup, then an arrow to various horizontal lines that I wanted to represent the various alcohols. Basically, a temperature graph with ethanol in the middle, the hearts. On these, at the bottom, I wrote ‘First to co out: poison.’ And went up from there.
“Poisons at the bottom, poisons at the top. Why does it work like that?”
I answered honestly, sort of giving up, “I don’t know. You’d have to ask nature that question.”
Doctor Markin said, “It’s a sign of wisdom that one can admit their ignorance.”
“What are the benefits of this extraction?” asked Reese.
“Benefits. Uh, you get drunk faster.”
She narrowed her eyes at . Folded her arms. Tilted her head.
“And it’s versatile!” She sohow made feel like an errant child, caught doing sothing bad, speaking quick excuses, “In terms of taste and products. Distillations of ad will taste different than those of ale or wine. And then we can barrel them for years and alter their flavor!”
“I think that’s enough for , Your Highness. Thank you, I’ve learned a lot. I look forward to seeing what you can do with this, the drinkable part.”
“Yes ma’am. I, uh, will do my best.” I tried not to show my relief at her leaving, hoping the doctor would as well. Not sure how I imagined this going, but this was not it.
“Before leaving, I will repeat myself. You made for a fine surgeon’s assistant. I think you should dedicate more ti to studying dicine. One day, when you are married and your husband is ruling the kingdom, you’ll be able to keep yourself busy helping others. It’s a noble profession and more dignified than, shall we say, most nobility get up to.”
“Uh, wow. Thank you, I think.”
“Please have so of this, hearts you called it, sent over when you’ve built up a sufficient amount. I’d like to run my own experints on it.” He glanced over the room disapprovingly.
“I’m sure. I an, yes, certainly. Have a good day.”
“Your Highness,” the elderly man bowed and left, leaving wondering why I went to all this trouble.
Well, to make whiskey of course! I just had to train so people in the process. If we could produce enough of it, we could export it, use it as gifts for other states, perhaps even make strides in understanding the use of the byproducts as solvents. Who was I kidding? I was probably ssing up this world’s tiline by introducing moderately advanced chemistry before the theory of the atom was developed.
I gave up on that line of reasoning and happily produced ethanol all day. Later, I told myself, I’d have to get soone to make appropriately sized wooded barrels to store the stuff. But for now, it was enough just to produce so of it. A minor win. And kinda fun.
Plus, it kept my mind away from the suitors, wars, and earls.
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