The Rum Historian
A TALE OF RUM
7. THE COLUMN STILL
Marco Pierini
As we have seen in the previous articles of this series, in the West, rum was born in Brazil at the beginning of the 1600s (or maybe a little earlier). Then from Brazil it spread to the French and English Caribbean and finally from the English colony of Barbados it started its triumphal march into the world. In the early 1800s, rum had conquered the huge British market and it was strongly present all over the Atlantic World and in Continental Europe.
During these two centuries, the distilling apparatus and the production technique did not change much and were more or less the same in all producing countries. The distilling apparatus was still an Alembic, or Pot Still, and it worked by batch, or discontinuous, distillation.
Simplifying a lot, a Pot Still consists of a container (often called cucurbit), a head (also called cup), a cooling tube and a receiver. The distiller fills the cucurbit with the fermented liquid (often called wash) and heats it up. When the wash boils, the vapors are collected by the head, enter into the cooling tube, return to the liquid state and this new liquid is collected in the receiver. This new liquid is the distillate or Spirit. It is stronger than any fermented beverage, which is exactly what the distiller was looking for.
After each single distillation (often called run) you have to turn off the heath, empty the cucurbit and clean it carefully, lack of accuracy at that stage being often responsible for bad quality of the Spirit. Then you have to fill the cucurbit again with a new wash and start again. Moreover, the first run (often called stripping run) makes a weak Spirit (often called low wine) with a low alcoholic strength. So, the low wine has to be distilled all over again a second time, in order to reach the desired alcoholic strength. To sum up, making a Spirit was a complex procedure, time and labor consuming and therefore expensive.
As time went by, alembics became gradually bigger and more efficient, and heating techniques improved too, resulting in significant reduction of fuel costs, but the lengthy procedure necessary to produce a Spirit remained basically the same.
Rum didn’t change much either, as far as we know. Of course, there were better and worse rums. Brands did not exist yet, and traders and consumers chose according to geographical origin and price. For example, the rums coming from Barbados and Jamaica were generally considered better (and more expensive) than those produced in North America and in the French colonies. The rums which had undergone some aging during transport and then storage were better, less harmful to the health and cost more, while, to give just an example, those newly distilled which were sold to soldiers in the West Indies were dreadful and cost very little. All rum was very strong, full of congeners, it tasted harsh and had an unpleasant, when not outright foul smell: “the right rum stink”. It was drunk in great quantity by its habitual consumers, not least because it was cheap, but rejected by many, more discerning consumers.
Between the end of the 1700s and the beginning of the 1800s, however, for the first time in the century-old history of rum (and of the other spirits), things changed, and soon the world of rum would not be the same. Many distillers tried to go beyond the limits of pot still and batch fermentation. Their objective was clear: they wanted to produce a greater quantity of alcohol and get it done faster and save on production costs, with enormous economic benefits. Many tried, and many new patents were registered, at first with little success. But through trials and errors, in just a few decades a new type of distilling apparatus was born, faster, more efficient, inexpensive, which would be called Column Still, Patent Still and also Continuous Still.
Short History of the Art Of Distillation
About the first steps of this new type of distilling apparatus, let’s read what R. J. Forbes writes in his old, classic “Short History of the Art of Distillation” (1948).
“Now it may be generally true that England was supreme in the field of technology and France in the field of pure science. But such generalizations do not always hold when we go into the detail and this dictum is particularly true if we look at the history of distillation. For here the French technologists were supreme in the early nineteenth century, they were the men ‘distilled out of our virtues’ who led in the art. This new art of distilling was eminently practical for we have not yet reached the period of the mathematical and physical approach to the distillation apparatus. … the genius of the French distillers of the first two decades of the nineteenth century started an avalanche of patents of new distilling systems and apparatus”.
The pioneer of the new still was Eduard Adam, who in 1801 patented his new distilling apparatus ‘to prepare alcohol in one operation’. Adam and others French distillers “had introduced the idea of running the first condensate counter-current to the vapors and thus enriching it to produce the desired strength of the alcohol in one run.” This kind of still (often called also Double Retort Still or Double Thumper Still) was later improved by others and was remarkably successful in the West Indies where it coexisted for decades with the old Pot Stills and with the new Column Stills.
The final step of using the principles introduced by Adam and others to build a distilling column was taken by Jean Baptiste Cellier Blumenthal, born in Clermont Ferrand (France) in 1768. He was not interested in rum. Actually, “He was led to the design of a distilling column by his interest in manufacturing sugar from sugar-beets. He was attracted to the problem of sugar refining with many compatriots by a prize of one million francs put up by Napoleon for a good method of obtaining a uniformly crystallized white sugar in large quantities.”
Anyway, Cellier may be truly regarded as the inventor of the fractionating column. He patented his apparatus first in 1813, but the French government awarded him the patent only in 1818, after a long and victorious legal litigation above the paternity of the invention, because a lot of money was at stake. He introduced the fundamental idea of a continuous stream of fermented liquid entering the column still and a continuous stream of spent residue leaving it. In this way, distillation continued without interruption for a long period of time, thus saving on labor and fuel costs and producing a great quantity of alcohol.
“The tempestuous development of the new still in France long left the distilleries of Germany and England unaffected. At the same time it was beyond question that the experiments on development of the old still of the cucurbit type were not continued. It may be true that these old stills only gave a weak distillate, that had to be redistilled several times and the taste was often spoiled by empyreumatic ‘oils’.”
According to Forbes, in Great Britain “In the spirit industry the new French stills could not be adopted as such, for though the English distilleries worked with rather thin mashes of grain, these stills contained too many solids to be handled in the new apparatus without difficulties. The French pre-heater was discarded altogether, as the hot cooling-water could be used with profit in the malting-house, and therefore heat-economy on this point was only a secondary consideration. The new laws of excise drew a sharp line between the malting houses and the distilleries and then the new continuous stills began to become economical. The English inventors were drawn to the problem and the crown of their efforts was the Coffey still”. Aeneas Coffey patented his continuous still in 1830. It was not an immediate success, but with changes and improvements, soon it spread everywhere.
Concerning the fundamental differences between Pot Still and Column Still, I recommend you read the articles which Richard Seale recently published on his Facebook page, then collected on Rum Diaries Blog, on February 9, 2021 under the title “Aeneas Coffey, John Dore and Foursquare”. I think the following excerpt is crucial: “The dichotomy is not pot still v column still but batch still vs continuous still. All still designs fall into one of the latter two categories. The addition of fractionation or enhanced rectification to a batch still is still a batch still. The simple batch still relies solely on the lyne arm for rectification. Enhancing this effect does not change the fundamental nature of the still.
A batch still will produce a changing output over time (colloquially the heads, then hearts, then tails) from a single charge (batch) that itself changes as it is distilled. A continuous still produces an unchanged output that varies by position (not by time) on an unchanging charge that is fed continuously. Heads, hearts and tails are drawn off simultaneously from different positions. This is the fundamental distinction between the two processes which also explains why the two can never make the identical spirit.”
I haven’t been able to find precise dates yet, but in the second half of the 1800s the Column Still became widespread in most of the rum producer countries and even contributed to changing the production geography of rum: the age-old British primacy declined and by the end of the century the French Caribbean island of Martinica was the greatest producer of rum in the world.
The French Caribbean islands, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and the many new producing countries opening up to the world market (Australia, Reuniòn, Latin America, etc.) adopted the Column Still. Even the English colony of Demerara adopted the Column Still, while in Barbados rum production almost disappeared, and Jamaica remained faithful to the traditional Pot Still for many years to come.
As well as being more efficient and economical, and producing a bigger quantity of spirit faster and at a lower cost, it soon became clear that the rum produced by Column Still was qualitatively different, it was in fact another kind of rum.
According to its detractors (Jamaica rum producers in the front line) the new Column Still didn’t make true rum, with its specific organoleptic characteristics, its traditional, unique aroma and flavor. What comes out of the Column, they claimed, was not rum (or whiskey etc.) but a banal “neutral spirit”, without flavor and quality, soulless, in short, little more than neutral alcohol.
And yet, in actual fact, the new type of rum was immediately a great success. It did not have the usual bad smell, on the contrary, it smelt pleasant and was easy to drink, it had few congeners, it was light and, with a bit of aging, it even tasted good.
In the second half of the 1800s, this new type of rum made its way on the market, intercepting and satisfying a general change in the taste of traditional consumers of rum (and of whiskey). This change of taste was probably already underway, linked to the general rising of living standards, the advent of new soft drinks, the growing popularity of sport and of new ways of spending one’s leisure time. As regards Great Britain, James Pack devotes interesting pages to this issue in his seminal “Nelson’s Blood” and the triumph right now of Cuban Ron Ligero (light rum), about which we are going to speak in an upcoming article, is another example of this general change of taste.
Anyway, whatever the reasons, many people now wanted to drink for the pleasure of drinking something good; leisure drinking and not drinking just to escape the hardships of life for a while. And many would rather drink a spirit which had a nice smell, a smooth, less heavy flavor, and was maybe even healthier; last but not least, a spirit which left you less hung-over the following day. The new type of rum now available, by simply existing promoted this change. Even the most iconic British rum drinkers, the sailors of the Navy, preferred column-made Demerara rum to traditional pot still-made Jamaica rum. Last, but not least, this new type of rum conquered many new consumers all over the world, even polite society, including women.
In conclusion, as time went by, Column Still became more and more dominant, and even the most obstinate traditionalists, Jamaica included, had to adjust. I am not able to put my finger on the exact figures, but today the vast majority of the rum produced in the world is produced by Column still, often huge apparatuses, whereas pot still is used for producing limited quantities which usually (though not always) are of high quality, cost a lot and are meant for a niche market. We will get back to this.