Biography

Coffey was born in Calais

Calais

Calais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, where he spent his early years. His family returned to Dublin (both his parents were Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

), where he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin

Trinity College, Dublin

Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...

. He entered the excise service around 1799–1800 as a gauger. He married Susanna Logie in 1808, and they had a son, also named Aeneas, who may have been their only child.

According to British customs and excise records, he was appointed sub-commissioner of Inland Excise and Taxes for the district of Drogheda in 1813, and was eventually promoted to Inspector General of Excise in Ireland. He resigned from the service at his own request in 1824.

He enhanced the original design for the column still

Column still

A column still, also called a continuous still, patent still or Coffey still, is a variety of still consisting of two columns invented in 1826 by Robert Stein, a Clackmannanshire distiller, and it was first used at the Cameron Bridge Grain Distillery in Fife, Scotland. The design was enhanced and...

, which had been invented by Robert Stein in 1826. He patented his invention in 1831, and the column still became widely known as the "Coffey still" or "Patent Still". Early Coffey stills produced spirits of about 60% or somewhat higher alcohol by volume

Alcohol by volume

Alcohol by volume is a standard measure of how much alcohol is contained in an alcoholic beverage .The ABV standard is used worldwide....

 concentration. Modern versions can achieve much higher alcohol concentrations – approaching 95.6% alcohol

Ethanol

Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a psychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs. Best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a...

. As alcohol forms an azeotrope

Azeotrope

An azeotrope is a mixture of two or more liquids in such a ratio that its composition cannot be changed by simple distillation. This occurs because, when an azeotrope is boiled, the resulting vapor has the same ratio of constituents as the original mixture....

 with water at this concentration, it is impossible to achieve higher purity alcohol by distillation alone.

On his retirement from service, Coffey went into the distilling business and for a short time ran the Dock Distillery in Grand Canal Street, Dublin. The development of the Coffey still made distillation for beverage and other purposes much more economical.

See also

• Ó Cobhthaigh
  Ó Cobhthaigh
  -Overview:Ó Cobhthaigh was the name of an Irish Brehon family from what is now County Westmeath and County Longford.There were at least three other families of the name, located in the regions of Limerick-Kerry, Down, west Cork, and Galway....
  
   family of poets
• List of inventions named after people
• List of alumni of the University of Dublin