The Full Distilling Process Explained

Take this core point: craft distilling isn’t “buy a still and start.” It’s a chain of steps that happen after one another, and they’re tied together.

Quick summary

The five core steps

Basically, it's a process that consists of a few steps that take place after one another. Mashing is where we put grain in warm water, certain temperatures, mix it, and make sure that the starches in there convert to smaller fermentable sugar molecules. Fermentation is the process where we add to that sugary wash that we made yeast.

Mashing

Mashing is where you put grain in warm water at controlled temperatures and convert starches into fermentable sugar molecules.

Yeast is a microorganism that, if we manage it correctly, consumes that now fermentable sugar and turns it into, among other things, alcohol. So we're basically producing something like a wine or a beer, 7%, 8%, 9%, maybe 10% strong. If we've made that, we want to do a first distillation run.

Fermenting

Fermentation is where you add yeast to that sugary wash. If managed correctly, yeast consumes the sugars and produces alcohol (and more). You end up with something like a beer or wine—often ~7%–10%—not a spirit yet.

We'll dive in much deeper in another video a bit later. First distillation run, creating low wines, a 25%, 30% intermediate product. Clear, stronger in alcohol, not yet cut into a final brandy or whiskey or vodka.

Stripping

Next is a first distillation run: a stripping run. That creates low wines—an intermediate product, often ~25%–30% ABV, clearer and stronger, but not yet your final spirit.

That is what we do on the second distillation run. Finishing run, we make cuts, and the new mixed spirit in a final step is going to be aged. For example a rum or whiskey or even a brandy in a barrel for a few months, for a few years, in order to create a final flavor profile.

Finishing and cuts

On a finishing run, you make cuts to shape the final brandy, whisky, vodka, or other spirit. You’re concentrating alcohol and flavors—and choosing what to keep and what to leave out.

So yes, indeed, distilling is a process. It's as much about mashing and fermenting. And that's something that's very important to convey and we'll come back to very often.

Aging

Finally, many products are aged (rum, whisky, brandy) in a barrel for months or years to build the final flavor profile.

If you start the process with mashing and you think mashing is really not that important, it's just about converting starches into sugar, you allow yourself a 2%, 3% inefficiency. Through the follow up in these lines, and all of these processes have losses, have inefficiencies, you can understand that if you start with a relatively poor mashing result, this will create, down the line, by the time you get finished product, huge inefficiencies. The second reason why I want you to look at distillation and craft distilling as a process has to do with the fermentation step.

Why fermentation drives flavor

A common assumption is: fermentation just makes “base alcohol,” and distillation is where you refine it. That assumption needs to come off the table. If there’s one step that matters most for your product, it’s fermentation.

Why? Because you’re not only creating alcohol—you’re creating around 80% of your flavors. Distillation mostly concentrates alcohol and flavor, then removes certain alcohols and flavors through cuts.

We’ll go deeper on fermentation later in the course. For now, keep the core claim in mind: fermentation is where most of the flavor is created.

Fermentation is like that little ugly baby kit that nobody wanted to look at. Let's focus on a beautiful still instead. That's where we want to spend our money.

Efficiency compounds

Every step has losses and inefficiencies. If you allow a small inefficiency early (say, a few percent in mashing), it compounds by the time you reach finished bottles.

Luckily, we've got a few totes left and we'll do it in there. You can buy a tote for $100 and off you go. Why don't we spend more time, more training, more education, more money on fermentation?

Where bottling and selling fit

There’s another step people forget: after aging comes bottling, labeling, and then marketing and selling. Making spirits is the part that costs money. Selling bottles is the part that brings money back so you can keep improving and growing.

Well, quite simply, that's the answer that I get, because fermentation is only where we make the base alcohol. It is during distillation that we refine it. And that assumption is an assumption I want to throw off the table right now.

Course scope

If there is one step that is important in this whole process, more important than the others, it's not distilling. The reason why fermentation is so tremendously important is because you're not only creating your alcohol here, but you're also creating around 80% of your flavors. And quite frankly, the only thing you do during distillation is concentrate the alcohol and concentrate the flavors and cut out certain alcohols and cut out certain flavors at the end.

Time, planning, and bottlenecks

Think about time: mashing might be half a day to a day. Fermentation might be four to five days. A stripping run can take a day, and a finishing run can take a day. Aging can take years. So you need a plan for what happens each week, what you’ll make, and when costs turn into real liquidity in your bank account.

If you start with garbage in because of insufficient mashing procedures or bad fermentations taking place in a tote or IBC because that's cheap and why not? You're missing the whole point of becoming or being successful craft distiller. You're never going to out-compete Jack Daniels.

Hidden connection costs

When people set up traditional, compartmentalized distilleries, they budget for the big items (masher, fermenters, stills, racks). What surprises many is how much money and pain sits in the “everything that connects it”: tubing, piping, pumps, cleaning machinery, and the infrastructure needed to make the whole system work together.

If you want the growth problem this creates (and a different way to think about it), continue with why traditional layouts can trap you when you scale.

They've got such masses of production that their economies of scale is something that even with our advanced technology, you really cannot compete with. So the only thing you can compete on is flavor. If 80% or more of your flavors are made during fermentation, shouldn't you spend your money, your education, your training there?