Episode 42.5 Bonus - Distillation

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Listen to "042.5 Bonus - History of Distillation" on Spreaker.

Episode 42.5 Bonus - How we got Distillation and the Water of Life

or a Plethora of Ways to Kill Yourself Messily Through Physical Chemistry

Take a walk with me around the world to see how distillation got started, and how it went 2 ways out of Mesopotamia.  It looks like the Chinese were getting blitzed on Hard Alcohol before the Europeans.  And two styles of distillation rigs grew out of the early life of distillation whether you went east or west.

East - and distillation remained a pottery driven activity.  Used for both booze and Immortality Elixirs.  They most have been up to some extremely industrial strength stuff to the entire lake of Mercury they put in this guy's tomb:

Shi Huang Di
1st Emperor of a Unified China
3rd Century BCE


 West - where the focus was on floral essences for flavorings and perfumes along with chemistry, Immortality and the Philosophers Stone.  They didn't get around to booze until AFTER eyeliner (kohl).  But if you have really great grape wine and have invented sharbat /sherbet - what's the rush?

 

17th century depiction of
Our Lady of the Alembic - Maria the Jewess

Related Media:

Excavations on 500yo Chinese Distilleries:

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/chinese-distillery-0012563

https://www.laitimes.com/en/article/3kc90_4119q.html

Claypot stills and Mezcal - Reunited!

https://alipususa.com/mezcal-process/clay-potstills/

http://tequilaaficionado.com/2020/10/11/olla-de-barro-clay-pot-ancestral-mezcal-distillation-in-oaxaca/

The Debate Goes On!  When did distillation get to South America (2019)

https://irispublishers.com/oajaa/pdf/OAJAA.MS.ID.000509.pdf

More on Shi Huang Di: 

https://thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/episode-19-one-nation-under-qin/

An article on Kohl and Al Kohl and so on: 

https://milklions.medium.com/alcohol-the-story-of-an-arabic-eyeliner-that-got-drunk-in-europe-779a71020c0d

Books:

Meacham, Sarah Hand. Every Home a Distillery. Baltimore, MD; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

Moran, Bruce T. Distilling Knowledge. Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 2005.


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