There’s a lot of attention paid to the way that whiskey is aged. Talk to even a casual whiskey drinker and he or she will likely be able to drop some barrel factoids on you. Yet, the apparatus that is actually responsible for making that spirit, the whiskey stills, are often an area of mystery.

Pot Stills vs. Column Stills

The obvious starting point in any discussion of whiskey distillation is pot stills versus column stills. A pot still at its simplest consists of a large kettle or pot which is heated from the bottom, boiling off the alcohol and…