They actually bought their hybrid from Koval, after the Chicago distiller outgrew it. For instance, at Washington, D.C.’s One Eight Distilling, their hybrid pot still can be controlled with an app, allowing their team to fire it up remotely before even stepping through the doors. They’re highly advanced, and at large facilities are typically computer controlled and monitored.

Today’s stills have come a long way, of course. The hand built copper pot stills of Virginia Distillery Company (image via VDC) There’s Forsyths, in Scotland Vendome, based in Louisville, Kentucky Kothe, a German company (whose American wing was actually founded by the couple behind Koval who has helped to train and set up numerous American craft distilleries) CARL, another German manufacturer and also the Italian company Frilli, amongst others. If you need to acquire a new whiskey still today, who’s making it for you? A few names may be familiar. It was Coffey’s design that would truly transform whiskey production and be utilized across the globe. All the new designs along the way essentially offered increased efficiency, allowing distillers to distill to higher proofs in single runs.

Irishman Aeneas Coffey patented his column still design in 1830, building upon the design of Scotsman Robert Stein from several years prior, which itself built upon a number of previous continuous distillation column designs. What about Coffey stills and patent stills? Whether you call it a column still, continuous still, Coffey still, or patent still, you’re basically talking about the same thing. It has a pot still at its base but also one or more columns, allowing a distillery the flexibility to produce different types of spirits and to control the specifics of distillation along the way. Many of America’s craft distilleries today use what’s essentially a hybrid pot still.

Difference between american spirits