The Art of Making Whiskey | Page 2

considerable produce. Henceforth the Gin of the United States will be an important article of exportation for their outward trade, as well as for home consumption.
Receive, gentlemen, the Assurances of my Profound Respect, A. BOUCHERIE.

PREFACE.
The most usual drink in the United States, is whiskey; other spirituous liquors, such as peach and apple brandy, are only secondary, and from their high price and their scarcity, they are not sufficient for the wants of an already immense and increasing population. As to wine, in spite of all the efforts and repeated trials made to propagate the grape-vine, there is as yet no hopes, that it may in time become the principal drink of the Americans.
To turn our enquiries towards the means of bringing the art of making whiskey to greater perfection, is therefore, to contribute to the welfare of the United States, and even to the health of the Americans, and to the prosperity of the distiller, as I will prove in the sequel.
The arts and sciences have made great progress; my aim is to diffuse new light on every thing that relates to the formation of spirituous liquors that may be obtained from grains. Most arts and trades are practised without principles, perhaps from the want of the means of information. For the advantage of the distillers of whiskey, I will collect and offer them the means of obtaining from a given quantity of grain, the greatest possible quantity of spirit, purer and cheaper than by the usual methods. I shall then proceed to indicate the methods of converting whiskey into gin, according to the process of the Holland Distillers, without heightening its price.
If the principles hereafter developed are followed, the trade of distiller will acquire great advantages, that will spread their influence on agriculture, and consequently on commerce in general.

THE ART OF MAKING WHISKEY, &c.
CHAPTER I.
OF SPIRITUOUS LIQUORS, OR SPIRITS.
Spirituous liquors are the produce of vinous ones, obtained by the distillation of these last. The art of making wine is of the remotest antiquity, since it is attributed to Noah; but that of distilling it, so as to extract its most spirituous part, dates only from the year 1300. Arnand de Villeneuve was the inventor of it, and the produce of his Still appeared so marvellous, that it was named Aqua-Vit?, or Water of Life, and has ever since continued under that denomination in France; Voltaire and reason say that it might, with far more propriety, be called Aqua-Mortis, or Water of Death.
This liquor, called in English, Brandy, received from the learned the name of Spirit of Wine; time improved the art of making it still stronger by concentration, and in that state it is called Alcohol.
All spirit is the distilled result of a wine, either of grapes, other fruits, or grains; it is therefore necessary to have either wine, or any vinous liquor, in order to obtain spirits.
CHAPTER II.
OF THE FORMATION OF VINOUS LIQUORS WITH GRAINS, IN ORDER TO MAKE SPIRITS.
The art of extracting wine from the juice of the grape, not being the object of this book, I shall confine myself to what is necessary and useful to the distillers of whiskey; it is therefore of the vinous liquor extracted from grains, that I am going to speak.
The formation of that kind of liquor is founded upon a faculty peculiar to grains, which the learned chymist, Fourcroy, has called saccharine fermentation. Sugar itself does not exist in gramineous substances; they only contain its elements, or first principles, which produce it. The saccharine fermentation converts those elements into sugar, or at least into a saccharine matter; and when this is developed, it yields the eminent principle of fermentation, without which there exists no wine, and consequently no spirit.
Grains yield two kinds of vinous liquors, of which the distiller makes spirit, and the brewer a sort of wine, called beer. From a comparison of the processes employed to obtain these two results, it will be found that the brewer's art has attained a higher degree of perfection than that of the distiller. They both have for their object to obtain a vinous liquor; but that of the brewer is, in reality, a sort of wine to which he gives, at pleasure, different degrees of strength; while that of the distiller is scarcely vinous, and cannot be made richer. I will give a succinct exposition of their two processes in order that they may be compared.
OF THE ART OF BREWING.
The art of brewing consists:
1st. In the sprouting of a proportion of grain, chiefly barley. This operation converts into a saccharine matter, the elements of that same substance already existing in grains.
2dly. In preparing the wort. For that operation, the grain, having been previously ground, is put into a vat, which is half filled up with water; the rest is filled up