Distillate: The Hidden History of Cocktails, Spirits & Drink Culture

Gin was said to have been invented by a Dutch physician as a cheap diuretic. Within decades it had crossed the Channel, and by 1743, London was consuming 2.2 gallons of gin per person per year — every man, woman, and child in a city of 600,000.This episode traces the history of gin from the Dutch Low Countries to the streets of Georgian London, where it became the first large-scale public health crisis of the industrial age. The city's poorest workers drank it because it was cheaper than food and safer than water. Parliament banned it, taxed it, and restricted it — and none of that worked until they regulated who could sell it.William Hogarth published Gin Lane in 1751, showing a mother dropping her baby into a gin vault. Parliament passed the Gin Act the same year. The poverty that caused the crisis didn't go anywhere.Full show notes, research sources, and transcript at thealchemistsbar.com.

Rum was never supposed to exist. It was the garbage of the sugar trade — fermented molasses, the waste product of Caribbean plantations — and it became the fuel of an empire.This episode traces the story of how a byproduct of industrial slavery turned into the first drink manufactured at scale, how it moved across the Atlantic as currency and commodity, and what it means that the history of rum and the history of the slave trade are the same history.The Royal Navy even issued a daily rum ration to its sailors from 1655. They stopped in 1970.Full show notes, research sources, and transcript at thealchemistsbar.com.

The history, science, and human story behind what's in the glass — and what it reveals about the world that made it. Launching May 5, 2026.