Alcohol

The most commonly used alcohol is ethanol, C2H5OH, with the ethane backbone. Ethanol has been produced and consumed by humans for millennia, in the form of fermented and distilled alcoholic beverages. It is a clear flammable liquid that boils at 78.4°C. Alcohols have applications in industry and science as reagents or solvents. Because of its low toxicity and ability to dissolve non-polar substances, ethanol can be used as a solvent in medical drugs, perfumes, and vegetable essences such as vanilla. In organic synthesis, alcohols serve as versatile intermediates. Humans have consumed ethanol in alcoholic beverages since prehistoric times for a variety of hygienic, dietary, medicinal, religious, and recreational reasons.

Whether you are using ethanol as a reagent, a solvent or as a beverage, Lake Distilling offers a selection of grain based spirits from 192 proof (96%) on down to proofs as low as 40 (20%). Our products made from New York white wheat that is grown on our farm and farms around Finger Lakes region. Wheat alcohol give a spirit a soften taste which can make a final product such as Vodka, Gin or Liqueur have a very smooth taste.

In Russia it is said “мягкая водка из мягкой пшеницы”. Which translates as the smoothest vodka comes from the softest wheat.  The softest wheats are low protein wheats and soft white from New York rates as some of the softest in the world.  Most wheats are grown in dry climates and tend to have high protein and low starch content. New York’s climate makes it perfect for growing high starch wheat with our cool wet springs and moderate summer temperatures. Grown in the Finger Lakes with our deep Glacial soils New York white wheat gives the distiller a wheat that is better for making high quality spirits than any where else in the North America. Our climate more closely matches the cool climates found in Scotland or Northern France or Holland. Making it easy for our master distiller to meet or exceed the quality of any European distillery. The wheat combined with the pure clean waters of the Finger Lake Region who’s water are passed over limestone in the same fashion as those waters found in Kentucky’s Bourbon Region and Frances Champaign region.  It’s easy to taste the quality found in Lake Distillings Luxury class spirits.

Our alcohol is sold in bulk, totes and drums with a minimum quantity of 2 drums.

Organic Alcohol

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About Gluten

A brief discussion of Gluten and Alcohol is appropriate because the grain we use to make our alcohol is wheat. While our wheat is low protein wheat it still contains some gluten. However, that gluten never makes it into the alcohol. How you ask, let me explain. When a distillation is performed, pure ethanol is separated away from all of the other “stuff” that forms as a result of fermentation. This is because ethanol is volatile (meaning it becomes a gas in the distillation process). Imagine a vat of fermentation products, you heat it, and only the volatile molecules like ethanol enter a tube attached to the vat. This tube is not just any tube it is a curved condensation tube! Here is what it does: While the heated gas form of ethanol floats into it (because that is what gases do), the molecules are cooled and condense back into a liquid, and fall into a new sparkling clean vessel containing the stuff that intoxicates you and any other volatiles. So the fancy distillation columns that are actually used industrially (like Lake Disillings) also purify the ethanol away from other volatiles. Gluten does not stand a chance of “crossing over” because it is not volatile. Here is a simplified analogy. Let’s say you put some sand in the bottom of your tea kettle. If you take the spout off your tea kettle, and attach a condensing tube to the opening (a curved tube would be the simplest type of condensing tube but there are many elaborate types), you could distill your water away from the sand. The condensing tube would be curved so as to open into a new clean pot. Let us pretend that the sand is gluten and the water is ethanol. When you heat to the boiling point, the liquid becomes gas so it travels into the condenser, cools and becomes liquid, then falls into the clean pot. Now having read that, is there any way that the new clean pot would contain any sand? No, and distilled alcohol (ethanol) does not contain any gluten. Remember, gluten is not volatile. Gluten proteins and peptides (even amino acids) have so little volatility, they don’t vaporize with the alcohol in distillation, and are left behind.
Another nonvolatile compound is table salt. So you could perform a distillation at home, with salt water. Has anyone ever inadvertently done this? Boiled a pot of salt water, perhaps to make some pasta, and walked away to do something else. You came back to find your pot almost empty with white crusty stuff (salt) all inside the pot. So the gluten is left behind in a distillation process and remember distillation is nothing like a filtration. We are not separating small from large, there is no filter. Filtration would be like how your coffee pot separates water from the coffee grains. A tear in the filter would result in a big problem, right? Filtration is a separation based on size, distillation is a separation based on volatility. So it’s safe to say our alcohol is 100% gluten free and thus meets FDA guidelines and can be labeled as such.