Alembic
An Alembic, or still, is a building used to create distilled spirits from alcohol (beer and/or wine).
Source
This building becomes available after you have learned the Distillation tech.
Cost
- 6 Copper Sheeting
- 1 Thermometer
- 25 Gold Wire
- 2 Brass Small Gear
- 15 Glass Jars
Built in a Compound. Uses 9x14 cells.
Use
An alembic works by heating alcoholic liquid (either wine or beer) in a pot to make Spirits. Because alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, the pure alcohol is separated from the rest of the mixture. The alcohol vapor drifts up through a pipe, cools, condenses, and collects in the output sink as liquid.
Alembics run on charcoal. Up to 1000 can be stored in the alembic.
- The different qualities of types of Spirits are: Ra, Life, Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Grey
- There are ten types of spirits: Rock, Wood, Worm, Grain, Grass, Fruit, Vegetable, Mineral, Fish, and Grey
Adding Alcohol
You can Add Wine or Add Beer to the alembic at any time. This adds the alcohol in that beverage to whatever's already in the pot. You can do this while the alembic is running. You can also choose to let the alembic heat up to some desired level before you add any alcohol at all (this is in fact good advice if you are trying for some intermediate-level spirit like Grain).
Note: Use large amounts of beer/wine at a time. When using 1 beer I get about 17 spirits of fire quality or 25 spirits of water quality. When using 8 beers at a time I get about 46 spirits of fire quality per beer. Huge difference! - Solaris
Guides
Every bottle of wine, and every keg of beer, can be thought of as a distribution of spirits of varying weights. The challenge of distillation is to coax out a particular segment of that distribution, at the level and purity desired.
Levels
Please note that these are the levels to aim for, not the ranges, many thanks to Gumby for the info.
