Reading: 1.4 Alcoholic Fermentation

Alcoholic fermentation is key to the production of all spirits. For a fermented beverage such as wine or beer, it is often enough to know that yeast produce ethanol and flavours. However, for the distiller, the many outputs produced by yeast have to be well understood because they are concentrated during distillation and, as a result, they can have a significant impact on a spirits style and quality. You will find out about all of this by reading Chapter 4 of Understanding spirits: Explaining style and quality. 

Read and Review

The main focus for this week is the function of yeast in the context of a liquid-state, sequential fermentation; this is the method used to produce the vast majority of the spirits in this course. 

Make sure you cover the reading content on semi-solid-state, solid-state and parallel fermentations as well as the role played by bacteria, but note we will cover these topics later in the course.