Specialty Products

Until the end of the Second World War, traditional cachaça production remained predominant in Brazil. From 1945 to 1960, the rst large-scale cachaça production companies began to appear, and cachaça production became increasingly industrialized. Currently, industrial distilleries are responsible for the production of about 1 billion of liters of cachaça per year, and the cachaça is distilled in stainless steel columns (Figure 38.1). These columns contain several plates with bubble caps and siphon tubes or other contact devices that function as a series of single-distillation apparatuses (Rosa et al. 2009). Traditional cachaça, however, is made through the distillation of sugar cane wine in copper alembics by rural producers, who produce an additional 300 million liters of cachaça per year (Rosa et al. 2009; Marini et al. 2009). The majority of traditional producers in Brazil use copper alembics for cachaça distillation (Figure 38.1). The copper found in the alembic still walls reacts with sul des, such as demithyl sul de, during the distillation process, lowering their concentrations. These reactions prevent taste defects that are typically associated with cachaças distilled in stainless steel columns (Cole and Noble 1995; Faria et al. 1993; Marini et al. 2009). Cachaça production occurs during the sugar cane harvest, from May to December, in most producing regions.