Processing Distilled Beverages from Cereals

This chapter explores important aspects of wort production and the fermentation and distillation processes carried out to obtain distilled beverages from cereals. Emphasis is given to the main raw materials, for example, the cereals most used as grains or malt. Essential operations involved in the production process, such as hydrolysis (when using grains) or mashing (when using malt), fermentation, and beverage aging, are also covered. The chapter also explains the different fermentation modes to obtain distilled beverages: batch fermentation, fed-batch fermentation, semicontinuous fermentation, continuous fermentation, and the different types of distillation used in the case of some distillates, like whiskey. Finally, the kinetics for the different ways of conducting the process is shown, and some equations that may contribute to savings on producing beverages by artisanal distillers are presented.