[Sca-cooks] fortified wines

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Seton1355 at aol.com wrote:
> --
> [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
> Ok....  <blush>  what is brandy, I mean what is it made of? I always thought
> that it was just wine.
> Phillipa

Um. Okay, this is a new one on me ;  ) . No disrespect intended, you
just caught me off  guard. Brandy is a wine distillate, short for
brandewijne (variously spelled), or burnt wine (or wine that _can_ be
burnt), which denotes that it has been distilled. You heat the wine, or
dregs, or fermented grain mash (except that that would be whisky, not
brandy), and capture the volatile, alcohol-rich vapors in the top of
your sealed container. They flow through a copper condensor coil,
usually, and condense as a highly alcoholic solution without a lot of
water in it, if you've done it right. You can then age it in barrels and
such to remove some of the nasty-tasting esters that have been distilled
out with your alcohol, which gives you, in theory, a smooth, drinkable
product, as opposed to harsh "white lightning".

I probably don't have the chemistry perfect but this is reasonably close.

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98