Coffey, Aeneas (1780–1852), invented the first commercially viable continuous still adapted to distilling grain and patented it in 1830. The first steps in this direction had been taken two years earlier by Robert Stein of Kilbagie Distillery at Alloa in Scotland (1770–1854), building on the general principles pioneered by Jean-Baptiste Cellier-Blumenthal; Coffey greatly improved this design and made it more robust. See Cellier-Blumenthal, Jean-Baptiste. Born in Dublin (one source describes him as a “French-born Irishman”), Coffey entered the lowest level of the excise service in 1800 as a “land-waiter, guager and searcher,” receiving several bayonet wounds during the “poitín wars” with smugglers. In 1809 he was appointed surveyor for Dublin City and in 1819 inspector-general of excise in Ireland. Five years later (at the age of forty-four) he left the excise service and bought the Dodder Bank Distillery in Dublin.
His prototype stills were made of wood and iron and consisted of a single column, like Stein’s heated by steam injection (Cellier-Blumenthal relied on the traditional direct-heated boiling pot). This was soon replaced by double columns—the analyzer and the rectifier—made from copper, with perforated copper plates replacing Stein’s earlier horsehair ones and rectifying pipes to remove the residual oils during distillation. Coffey stills were simpler, more robust, and easier to manufacture; they produced a stronger and purer spirit, were more economical to heat, and had better rectifying qualities.
The leading Irish distillers initially scorned Coffey’s stills. In its polemic treatise Truths about Whiskey (1878), the “Big Four” Dublin firms stated, “These things no more yield whiskey than they yield wine or beer.” However, within ten years of registering his patent, thirteen Irish distilleries had adopted the new still. The first Scottish distillery to install a Coffey still was Grange in 1834, and by 1850 eleven others had followed suit. Aeneas Coffey moved his business to London and died in Bromley, Middlesex, in 1852. His company went to his son Philip and then, in 1872, to John Dore, his last foreman, who built it into one of the leading British makers of stills. As John Dore & Co., Ltd., it is still in business.
See also Coffey still and still, continuous.
Craig, Charles. The Scotch Whisky Industry Record. Dumbarton: Index, 1994.
Rothery, E. J. “Aeneas Coffey, 1780–1852.” Annals of Science 24 (1968): 53–72.
By: Charles MacLean