still, three-chamber , or simply chamber, represents an intermediate stage between a pot still and a continuous or column still. In common use in the United States and Germany during the nineteenth century, it is rarely seen today and until recent years was essentially forgotten, even though it has certain advantages not possessed by either of the other types.
The three-chamber still takes the form of a copper column or, frequently, a wooden one assembled from staves (in the United States, poplar, cypress, and cedar were the preferred woods). This is divided internally by horizontal copper plates into three distinct compartments (some have four, with the middle one repeated). Live steam is piped into the bottom compartment and fresh wash into the top one, which is merely a warmer, with the pipe leading hot vapor out of the still going through it, cooling the vapor and heating the wash in the process. See reflux. Once the wash is warmed, it is dropped into the middle compartment through a valve. There, steam rises up from the lower compartment through a pipe that is bent back down almost to the compartment floor, forcing the steam to bubble through the wash and strip off the alcohol within, which exits the still through the warmer. When most of the alcohol has been extracted from the wash in the middle compartment, it is dropped to the bottom one via another valve, and the middle compartment is refilled from the warmer. Once that charge has been run, the bottom compartment is evacuated to make way for it, and the process repeats.
Three-chamber stills are almost invariably connected to doublers, which essentially perform another distillation before sending the vapor to the condenser. See doubler, thumper, keg, or retort. The resulting distillate, at about 80–85 percent ABV, is generally heavier than a column-still spirit but lighter than a pot-still one. The still is particularly useful for thick (non-filtered) grain mashes, as the grain cooks in the still for far longer than it does in a column still, without the possibility of burning. The long cooking time extracts a wide range of congeners, making for a rich spirit, and also yields a well-cooked spent mash that makes a superior cattle feed. That is no longer the important consideration it was in the nineteenth century, when American and German distilleries often raised cattle.
Furni novi philosophici (“New philosophical furnaces”) described and illustrated a still where water is heated in a closed copper vessel and the resulting steam injected into the bottom of a wooden barrel full of wash, exiting at the top to go to a condenser. However, the idea seems to have remained dormant until the late eighteenth century, when European and American distillers started to experiment with steam distillation.The early steam stills, such as Heinrich Pistorius’s influential one from 1817, which became widely used in Germany and functions mechanically like a three-chamber still, were fairly complex, with separate distilling chambers joined by pipes. In America, anyway, the three-chambered wooden column appears to have been introduced in the 1820s or 1830s, although steam distillation with wooden stills was already widespread in the 1810s. It is not known who invented it, but it was an excellent piece of design: simple, cheap to make (particularly in an era when distilleries generally had coopers on staff), easy to operate, and effective. By the middle of the century, as the Scottish American distiller John McCulloch noted in 1867, the wooden three-chamber still had become the default still in America. Although German distillers tended to prefer continuous stills, the “Blasenapparat” (“chamber device”) in wood or, more commonly, copper was nonetheless widely used in korn distillation.
In America, continuous stills began replacing three-chamber ones in the 1880s, particularly in Kentucky. See still, continuous. Yet, according to Bonfort’s Wine and Spirit Circular, after a decade or so many distillers switched back, finding that the spirit they were making was lacking. The three-chamber still was particularly favored for rye whisky, although some bourbon producers swore by it as well (one major supporter was Solomon Herbst’s respected Old Fitzgerald distillery, which used a wooden three-chamber beer still).
In the United States, Prohibition killed off the three-chamber still. The distilleries that either survived the Great Drought or were successfully launched after Repeal had to be ruthlessly efficient: the market was a volume one, not a specialty one. And, as the German distilling authority Max Delbrück’s distilling lexicon noted in 1915, continuous stills “use less operating steam and deliver a purer spirit with a higher alcohol content” (this doomed the still in Germany as well). Today only two three-chamber stills are known to be in operation: an old one at the West Indies Rum Distillery in Barbados (although mostly used for grain spirits, the stills were also sometimes used for brandy and rum), and a new one custom-built for the Leopold Brothers distillery in Denver, Colorado, who are using it to make rye whisky.
See also distillation, history and whisky, rye.
Delbrück, Max, ed. Illustriertes brennerei-lexicon. Berlin: Parey, 1915.
Glauber, John Rudolph. A Description of New Philosophical Furnaces. Translated by J[ohn] F[rench]. London: 1651.
McCulloch, J. Distillation, brewing, and malting. San Francisco: A. Roman, 1867.
“Our Western Department.” Bonfort’s Wine and Spirit Circular, July 10, 1902, 221–225.
“Steam still.” Nashville Clarion and Tennessee State Gazette, September 9, 1817, 3.
By: David Wondrich
The three-chamber still explained, from a 1943 Joseph E. Seagram & Sons house distillers’ manual. In most such stills, the top compartment is merely a pre-warmer for the wash, rather than a full distilling chamber as pictured here.
Wondrich Collection.
The three-chamber still explained, from a 1943 Joseph E. Seagram & Sons house distillers’ manual. In most such stills, the top compartment is merely a pre-warmer for the wash, rather than a full distilling chamber as pictured here. Source: Wondrich Collection.