The first person credited for distilling spirits was Jabir ibn Hayyan in 800 A.D., an alchemist who developed the first known technique for distilling. He lived around 700 AD and put the distillation principles to paper.
From as early as the 12th century, people have been cooking, fermenting, and distilling whatever source of starch or sugar was locally available into beverage alcohol. In Scotland, whiskey was highly admired and extensively manufactured as early as the late 1400s. Although there is some evidence for a distillation-type process in ancient Egypt, the first reports of whisky production arise in Ireland in the twelfth century, and the first description of a whisky production process is found in Scottish records dating from 1494.
It is estimated that a quarter million Scotch-Irish poured into America during the five heavy waves of the great migration. As the colonists began to arrive in America, they brought with them the practice of distilling whiskey.
By 1625 two brew houses had begun operation in Virginia. Several years earlier, an Episcopalian missionary, Captain George Thorpe, had learned how to convert Indian maize into liquor and had set up a crude distillery at Berkeley Plantation on the banks of the James River.
During Whiskey Rebellion (1791-1794), farmers were used to distilling their surplus grains into whiskey and a united protest gathered speed, particularly in the western counties of Pennsylvania where federal officials were intimidated in order to deny collection of the tax.
The whiskey industry in the United States developed from an overabundance of corn supply and farmers would turn their excess corn into whiskey, rather than pay taxes on the corn.
Since the distillery was essentially a piece of farm equipment, it should be no surprise that by the late 1700’s, there were literally thousands of small grain distilleries each in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland.
Whiskey production grew, until the rising popularity of the Prohibition movement swept Congress and alcohol production and consumption in the United States was made illegal.
History of corn whiskey
