The Practical Distiller | Page 8

of wheat flour, add small quantity of whiskey, in which, previously dissolve a little salt, when you have stirred the middlings with a stick, rub it between your hands until it becomes pretty dry, then spread it out thin, on a board to dry in the sun ... rubbing once or twice in the day between your hands until it is perfectly dry, which will be in three or four good days--taking it in at night before the dew falls--when it is properly dried, put it up in a paper and keep it in a dry airy place for use.
Thus yeast will keep good, if free from moisture, for any length of time, and it is the only effectual mode of preserving stock yeast pure and sweet ... when put up conformably to the foregoing instructions, the distiller may always rely on having it good, and depend on a good turn out of his grain, provided he manages the other parts of his distilling equally well.
About two hours before you mean to use the dried yeast, the mode is to take two gills, place it in any convenient vessel, and pour thereon milk-warm water, stir and mix it well with the yeast, and in two or three hours good working yeast will be produced.
In the spring every distiller ought to make as much as would serve 'till fall, and every fall as much as will serve thro' the winter, reckoning on the use of one pint per week, three gills being sufficient to start as much stock yeast as will serve a common distillery one week.
ART. VIII.
To make the best Yeast for daily use.
For three hogsheads take two handfuls of hops, put them into an iron pot, and pour thereon three gallons boiling water out of your boiler, set the pot on the fire closely covered half an hour, to extract the strength from the hops, then strain it into your yeast vessel, thicken it with chopped rye, from which the bran has been sifted ... stir it with a clean stick until the lumps are all well broken and mixed ... cover it close with a cloth for half an hour, adding at the time of putting in the chopped rye, one pint of good malt when the rye is sufficiently scalded, uncover and stir it well until it is milk-warm, then add one pint good stock yeast, stirring until you are sure it is well mixed with the new yeast. If your stock yeast is good, this method will serve you ... observing always, that your water and vessels are clean, and the ingredients of a good quality; as soon as you have cooled off and emptied your yeast vessel, scald and scour, and expose it to the night air to purify. Tin makes the best yeast vessel for yeast made daily, in the above mode.
In the course of my long practice in distilling I fully discovered that a nice attention to yeast is absolutely necessary, and altho' I have in the foregoing pages said a great deal on the subject, yet from the importance justly to be attached to this ingredient in distilling, and to shew more fully the advantages and disadvantages arising from the use of good and bad yeast, I submit the following statement for the consideration of my readers.
Advantages in using good yeast for one month, at 5 bushels per day; 30 days at 5 bushels, is 150 bushels at 60 cents, costs $ 90 00
Contra 150 bushels yield 3 gallons per bushel, at 50 cents per gallon--450 gallons, 225 00 -------- Profit $ 135 00
Disadvantages sustained during the above period. 150 bushels at 60 cents, $ 90 00
Contra 150 bushes yielding 1-1/2 gallons to the bushel--225 gallons at 50 cents, 112 50 ------- Profit $ 21 50
Thus the owner or distiller frequently sustains in the distillation of his produce, a loss, equal and in proportion to the foregoing--from the use of indifferent yeast, and often without knowing to what cause to attribute it. This statement will shew more forcibly, than any other mode--and is made very moderate on the side of indifferent yeast, for with bad sour yeast the yield will be oftener under one gallon to the bushel than above one and an half--whereas with good yeast the yield will rarely be so low as three gallons to the bushel. It is therefore, I endeavor so strongly to persuade the distiller to pay every possible attention to the foregoing instructions, and the constant use of good yeast only, to the total rejection of all which may be of doubtful quality.

SECTION II.
ARTICLE I.
Observations on Wood for Hogsheads.
The cheapest and easiest wrought wood is generally most used for making mashing tubs, or hogsheads, and very often for dispatch or from necessity, any wood that