-----Original Message----- From: Roy Louis D Cox [mailto:roy.cox@btinternet.com] Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 7:52 PM To: 'Judes' Subject: RE: [OEL] Alembick Good Evening All - ALEMBIC: 1. An obsolete type of retort used for distillation. 2. Anything that distils or purifies. Courtesy of Collins Concise Dict: I have in mind a large round glass bowl with a long enclosed V-shaped spout issuing from its top and bending downwards until the exit is about a couple of mm across or maybe less. This end would be placed in another vessel where the cooled steam would collect as a liquid. Sizes vary of course depending on the distillation. Used also I think in the laboratory. Sorry not to have answered previous mail on this subject but life is a bit 'busy' at present - Kind Regards June & Roy (SANHS Member No 1066) http://www.btinternet.com/~roy.cox/index.htm -----Original Message----- From: Judes [mailto:judes@futura.ision.co.uk] Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:07 PM To: OLD-ENGLISH-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [OEL] Alembick >I don't suppose I'll discover whether the "alembick" I found being >>bequeathed in >a will was used for distilling liquor >or potions of some sort or indeed what it really looked like. I wonder if this has any connection to the word 'lambic', which is a type of Belgian beer? It's a unique kind, which is made by spontaneous fermentation using only the yeast and other microbes in the atmostphere. This was probably the original method by which man first discovered how to make beer. Regards - Judith Gibbons Coventry, UK ==== OLD-ENGLISH Mailing List ==== To contact the list administrator: OLD-ENGLISH-admin@rootsweb.com