Book excerpt: This comprehensive, technical guide offers the distiller pretty much everything there is to know about distilling fruit brandies. Raw materials, fermentation, mashing, alcohol determination, clarifying and filtering, and storage are all presented in great detail through text, diagrams, and photos. Each and every aspect of distilling is presented, including timing, yields, detecting distillation errors, and more. This guide also offers a thorough introduction to the proper usage of necessary equipment ranging from measuring devices and vessels to simple stills and stills with enhancement systems, or columns. And for the enterprising distiller there is also an introduction to the process of grain distillation. Here is a great resource for adventurous artisans, home brewers, and vintners.