Hybrid stills are often mislabeled as column stills, confusing consumers and competitions—true column stills enable continuous, not batch, distillation.
But what does “column distilled” really tell me about the rum as a consumer? You said, “ Continuous / column distillation is location-based. Where you collect from matters, not when.”. Shouldn’t the location drawn from be noted on the bottle then? Can we assume it was taken from the top plate unless otherwise specified?
To my knowledge, the topmost plate isn't the defacto choice. In any event, specifying a plate number isn't terribly useful as different stills have different numbers of plates. There's a significant amount of technical detail here that I glossed over.
Very interesting Matt. In my mind I always viewed it as pot, column and continuous.
I'm sure you are correct. As a craft distiller I don't come across many "column stills" here in the UK.
Interesting read!!
But what does “column distilled” really tell me about the rum as a consumer? You said, “ Continuous / column distillation is location-based. Where you collect from matters, not when.”. Shouldn’t the location drawn from be noted on the bottle then? Can we assume it was taken from the top plate unless otherwise specified?
To my knowledge, the topmost plate isn't the defacto choice. In any event, specifying a plate number isn't terribly useful as different stills have different numbers of plates. There's a significant amount of technical detail here that I glossed over.