Pot Still question

[Rath Blacket]

Just something I've been wondering about, now I've never been to a distillery but I've seen numerous illustrations and photos of various pot stills, and although I know the distillation process very well, can someone tell me how the wash is actually fed into the Wash still? I'm assuming it's not through the manhole...
Someone please rid my ignorance

[Aidan]

Maybe it's different for each distillery, but usually it's fed in from below, I think.

[Deactivated Member]

Yeah, with buckets!

There are enough pipes and valves leading from the various vessels to the other various vessels--mash tuns, washbacks, stills, spirit receivers, spirit safes, holding tanks, who knows what else--to make one think the whole thing was designed by Rube Goldberg. In many more modern distilleries, all this can be controlled by one man at a central control panel. I hadn't really thought about it before, but I would think that gravity would be the preferred method of motivation whenever possible.