Alcohol

Techniques for producing the first alcoholic beverages, beer and wine, were developed millennia ago by various Middle Eastern and Far Eastern cultures. The word alcohol is of Arabic derivation. Ancient Egyptian papyrus scrolls exist with directions for making beer from dates and other plant foods. The alcohol in these drinks was ethanol (ethyl alcohol). Pure alcohol could not be made at that time; it was always mixed with the water, flavorings, and plant residue from the original fermentation. Almost all the ethanol produced was used for drinking, consumed as is perhaps after filtering or allowing the sediment to settle.

Fermentation, the oldest kind of alcohol production and possibly the oldest chemical technology in the world, is the action of yeast on sugars in solution. When fruits, vegetables, honey, molasses, or grains such as barley are mashed up in water and undergo fermentation, the yeast's metabolism of the sugars produces ethanol as a byproduct. Wood and starches can also be fermented, although their complex molecules must be broken down somewhat first. They always give small amounts of other larger alcohols (collectively called fusel oil) in addition to ethanol. Fermentation has been developed to an advanced technology and after distillation provides much of the fuel ethanol for addition to gasoline.

The process of distillation was discovered sometime after the first century A.D. Purer ethanol distilled from crude fermentation mixtures was then available for consumption, medicinal, and chemical uses. Eventually people learned to make methanol (wood alcohol) by destructively distilling wood but ethanol and methanol were the only alcohols available before the modern era.

The discovery and understanding of the alcohols as a group of chemical compounds has only happened in the last century. In 1926 the first industrial process for generating methanol was developed and since then many different alcohols have been made by direct chemical synthesis (the making of chemical compounds from simpler ones). The industrial processes that generate and consume alcohols change to keep up with modern technology and discoveries, but the alcohols continue to occupy a central place in the science of chemical synthesis.