Follow along: IG @birectifier
Did I get anything done? Is the blog still alive? Let’s find out. 2025 has been dominated by making it to Portugal. I’m currently dangling at the end of the world in the Algarve (and I may never leave). I’m close to announcing a project, but I’m still working on a commercial lease. We’ve got a handshake, but no signed papers.
2025 kicked off in January with Book Bounties 2025. Not many of the first listed documents turned up, but I also did not sufficiently hound the person that holds them. A blog hero helped make big progress on the Edwin Foote papers and one will turn up shortly. I still have many from that collection that I am turning into PDFs and will be featured this year.
Late January saw me examining a Medronho from Monte Silvares. Its the end of the year and I’ve learn enough Portuguese phonetics to finally pronounces Monte Silvares correctly!
In the beginning of February, I looked at a low quality gin (Old Raj). I hadn’t touched the stuff in a decade and was prepared to like it, but it appeared to be a strong brand with no substance behind it. I tried to drink the rest and got bored quickly. Many such gins are produced on contract by a few producers that we assume have a lot of expertise, but I don’t think its a given that they apply it to their products. At their scale and with many formulas, what kind of analysis do they do? And what might they even want to do if given more resources? Part of my interest is because I had revived the best Clevenger apparatus design for pragmatic essential oil yield analysis and I have found the birectifier extremely value for examining gins.
I was contacted by a scientist across the globe and a few days later in February I put out Arroyo: Mitogenetic Radiation as a Factor in Industrial Fermentation, 1945. This document filled in a missing citation that was going to be used in a symposium later in the year. Nearly a century passes and there are still no distilleries in the world that can duplicate Arroyo’s work in heavy rum.
I was on a roll in February and looked at an Exemplary Single Malt (Waterford!). This stuff is wonderful, but that distillery seems to have been killed by global overproduction and anti-competitive behavior. We live in the future, but cannot have nice things. I remarked that this would be Rafael Arroyo’s ideal whiskey and I stand by that.
Finding the paper for the symposium turned up a few more Arroyo papers:
Arroyo: The Principle of Thick Mashing in Industrial Fermentation, 1945
Arroyo: High Alcohol Beers in Rum Fermentation, 1945
Arroyo, The Production of Heavy Bodied Rum, 1945
Spend time with the last one and see if you can even follow along. Why can’t we achieve today what was done in the 1940’s? Why aren’t we even capable of basic research programs? The way money and incentives run through the industry, we could not even get people to talk about it.
At the end of March, Cory Widmayer gave me a guest post: Rafael Arroyo and the Golden Age of Industrial Fermentation. Arroyo had turned up in Cory’s industrial fermentation work and he wanted explain why Arroyo was so well positioned to break new ground in rum production. I’m sitting on a spectacular translation of a Brazilian work that Cory translated relating to rum production and it needs an increase in priority so it can appear on the blog.
In April, I rang the bell and it was Last Call: A final case for the birectifier. I succinctly framed the birectifier method in terms of DARPA’s Heilmeier Catechism. My wife had given me 5 more months to produce birectifiers before the equipment had to be packed up and in a shipping container. I have moved to a magical place, but getting workshop space is a big challenge.
Also in April, I tackled the 1967 Calvert Production Shift Supervisor Training Program. This came from a blog hero who did some wonderful leg work. This document is spectacular; it’s 100 pages of hardcore plant operation!, and shows what you need to know to work in a large distillery. I sent this around and it was reportedly being considered as a template for a modern training program. Could you hang at Calvert in 1967? These internal documents were guarded by Master Distiller’s and used throughout their career as new distilleries were setup. How many years are we into a distilling revival and we are only now getting a look at them? If this document saved you countless hours in designing a rigorous program, what is its value?
I examined another Medronho, from Adega Páscoa, in April. I am medronho obsessed and was looking to get the lay of the land. I would easily call Páscoa a top five producer and it clearly rivals the pleasure of drinking the finest agave spirits.
Even as the clock ticked in May, I invented a new birectifier design and demoed it with “Travel Birectifier” Analysis of Maria’s Medronho. The travel birectifier features a removable dephlegmator coil held on with really smart compression fittings (I machined some custom compression nuts). This design adaptation removed substantial risk in shipping birectifiers around the world where they are subject to rough customs inspections. It is more expensive to produce this design, but delivers on performance achieving all the benchmarks of the classic design. Another wonderful Medronho!
We jumped to July and 2 Weeks (August 14th) —> 86 The Birectifier. This is where things got kind of crazy and I made a lot of birectifiers in a short amount of time. On the one hand it warms your heart and on the other it was very challenging. Glassblowing is very hard. The house was also being disassembled around all this work. I was frantically building crates and chests for all my machinist tools.
You blink and its November and life goes from Philadelphia –> Algarve, Portugal. This project was already years in the making. The plan, well under way, is a cocktail bar by the sea in a Fellini-esque town dangling at the end of the world. Life in the town revolves around two magical market buildings designed by Gustave Eiffel. If you need a beach, the islands of Armona & Culatra sit out front and are a short ferry ride away. An ancient salt pan frames one side of town often populated with flamingos and the rest of the town is ringed by citrus groves that blossom twice a year before you climb into the hills full of Arbutus and olive trees. There are 40 wineries a short distance away without leaving the Algarve. You’re closer to Tangiers than you are the Lisbon and that dominates the vibe. Spain is right there and you may be more likely to visit Seville than going north. This is an extension of the Savoy and I’ve seen fishermen ordering vermouth at a coffee shop at 10:00 a.m.
The year did not end there. Right before I left, a friend of the blog, gave me access to a very rare book and I made a few chapters available:
Fruit Flavours and their Relevance to the Flavour of the Final Distilled Beverage
The Modification of Certain Constituents of Flavourings after Addition to Alcoholic Beverages
A Flavour Company’s Contribution to Distilled Beverages
Interesting rare insights abound!
Happy new year!
You must be logged in to post a comment.