The Distilled Genius of Aeneas Coffey
Aeneas Coffey (1780-1852)
Aeneas Coffey’s invention was ignored in Ireland but would revolutionise whiskey production in Scotland to his home country's detriment.
Aeneas Coffey was born in Calais, France in 1780 to Irish parents. After growing up in Cork and graduating from Trinity College Dublin, he entered the customs and excise service as a gauger. Gaugers worked at the ports, parcel post depots and at border stations and their role was to examine and clear imports and exports “gauging” casks of spirits and wine in order to assess the duty. Another role was to inspect legal distilleries and risking life and limb close down illegal ones such as notorious poitin stills whose products would sometimes leave people blind or dead from alcohol poisoning. Coffey was extremely diligent in this role, even being stabbed twice and a fractured skull while trying to close down an illegal distillery in Donegal. He married Susanna Logie in 1808 and they would have one son; Aeneas junior. In 1813 he was promoted to sub-commissioner of Inland Excise and Taxes for the Drogheda region and eventually would rise to become Inspector General of Excise in Ireland. In these roles Coffey was able to observe various types of stills and this natural born engineer could see their design flaws specifically how cumbersome, time consuming, difficult to use.
In 1824 he left the service and in a classic role reversal he did what any self-respecting customs and excise man would do on retiring, he entered the distilling business! Firstly, he started running the Dodder Bank distillery, then the South King Street distillery in 1828 and finally starting up the Dock Distillery on his own in Grand Canal Street in 1834. It was over the course of these year, that he began to develop a column still of his own, improving the design created by Robert Stein in 1826 who in turn had improved on Irishman Sir Anthony Perrier’s design. It became known as the “Coffey Still” and the first stills were a rectangular single column, made of iron and held in a frame of high quality Polynesian wood but as Coffey refined his invention and eventually patented it in 1830, he introduced perforated copper plates for improved rectifying, pipes to remove residual oils, enable heat transference and vapour recirculation and two metallic columns increasing production speed. All these design elements eliminated the previous requirement for multi-distillation and produced a spirit with a higher proof and lighter character.
Compared to the traditional pot still, it was revolutionary, producing an economical 60% purity and as his column design was refined and improved, 95.6% purity, ten times better than a typical pot still distillery. In addition, these efficiencies reduced costs by 50 to 70%. Coffey marketed his continuous still to Irish distillers but they were reluctant to change from their traditional big pot stills and with the exception of one company, his invention was ignored. The first distiller to take a chance on Coffey’s Still was the Abbey Street Distillery in Derry 1833 but it would take another fifty years before it was introduced by others in Ireland and even then sales were limited to the north-east; specifically, the “Royal Irish Distillery” in Dundalk and the “Avoniel Distillery” and “Irish distillery” in Belfast. This was due to the most part that Irish Whiskey at the time was the dominant brand in the world and distillers didn’t want to take a risk with something that might detrimentally affect their sales and also disturb the thousand-year-old tradition of pot-still distillation introduced by monks into Ireland during the dark ages. In addition, the lighter character alcohol produced by Coffey’s still was seen as a weakness by Irish distillers, it was so pure it lacked a distinct flavour, being described as ‘silent spirit’ with ‘no tongue with which to speak of whence it came’.
Coffey Still, Kilbeggan, Westmeath
With this one sale in Ireland, Coffey had no option but to move to Britain in order to drum up business and Aeneas Coffey & Sons was established in London. His first sale on that island was to the Grange distillery, Scotland in 1834 and in the following years distilleries at Inverkeithing, Bonnington and Cambus followed. Initially Coffey’s invention was bought and used by rectifiers and gin distiller who spiced the spirit selling it as gin, imitation brandy and cognac. He was still unsuccessful breaking into the whiskey market especially the traditional Irish and Scottish ones but slowly and surely from the mid-1840s he made inroads into the Scotch whiskey market and this would change the industry forever.
About this time, whiskey traders began blending the products of different distilleries and selling them under their own labels. This enabled the inclusion of the “silent spirit” from Coffey stills, now called “grain whiskey” to be added into the mix. These blended whiskeys gave a lighter non-smoky character which made it smoother and more palatable especially to the large English market. It wasn’t all down to character however, outside circumstances were also a factor such as the advent of marketing/advertising, taxation of foreign alcohols, tax breaks for local yeast manufacturing and perhaps most importantly, the formation of price cartels meaning a virtual monopoly was formed over time by a company called Distillers Company Limited (DCL) that would last most of the 20th century. All these factors meant revenue for distillers would increase exponentially and Coffey was so busy that he closed Dock Distillery in order to devote all of his time to this business, Aeneas Coffey & Son had established themselves as the most prominent still makers in the world.
Eventually Coffey’s Still would be adopted all over the world, helping to produce rums, gin, vodka and blended whiskeys and the Irish Whiskey trade began a steady decline as consumers flooded to these easier to drink products. It wasn’t all Coffey’s fault however, other factors for this decline were high taxation, the famine, the temperance movement, the war of independence, civil war and the economic war with Britain all contributed. By the end of World War 2 only seven Irish distilleries remained from around 160 in the 19th century and rightly or wrongly Coffey was blamed for their demise. Rejected by Ireland, he like many of his countrymen had sought and won his fortune in Britain, it was here he settled and passed in 1852 aged seventy -two years.
A modern Coffey still
Coffey’s legacy is that his invention is still used widely in the spirits industry today making alcohol for consumption and industrial uses. The Irish whiskey industry eventually adopted the Coffey Still and started making their own bespoke blends for market and they can be seen today producing the “Uisce Beatha” for customers to enjoy around the world. Aeneas Coffey & Sons, still exists in London today as part of John Dore & Co Limited.
References:
http://whiskyscience.blogspot.com/2013/08/history-of-column-still.html
http://www.cocktailsoldfashioned.de/2011/02/demerara-distillers-limited-guyana-rum/
https://midletonrared.com/tag/aeneas-coffey/