Copper is beautiful. It seems to glow in the sunlight and somehow evokes warmth and well-being in us. Perhaps that’s why I always want to hug a still when I see one…or perhaps it’s the whiskey…
In 1999, when Charlie Downs and Craig Beam moved Heaven Hill operations to the Bernheim distillery in Louisville (after the devastating fire at their Bardstown distillery in 1996), they discovered that the six story column stills on the new site would need some tweaking to produce the whiskey they wanted. Not only did they have to drill out bigger holes to let the beer flow properly, but found they needed more copper. Copper is essential in creating good whiskey because it reacts with and removes dimethyl trisulfide and other sulfur containing compounds from the distillate. Heaven Hill had Vendome (still makers) add more copper in the form of a copper screen that would fit into the doubler and clean up the final run of whiskey. It gets so much interaction with sulfur compounds that it has to be replaced yearly! (Copper stills in Scotland have a life of about 25 years before being replaced-with every bump, ding, and idiosyncrasy replicated!)
