Hints on various subjects connected with our business / by A.I. Mathews & Co.

Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints on various subjects connected with our business / by A.I. Mathews & Co. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    43/176 page 41
    ALCOHOL.—WHISKEY. Sugar is at tlie bottom of all alcoholic products, hlixed with water, kept warm,, aud set to fermenting, some carbonic acid is' given off, the sugar turns up missing, and instead'of it you have whiskey and. water. Then it is distilled, (that is, heated,) and that which^is-lightest of course goes off in steam fii-st, and this steam being .condensed, proves to be whiskey, minus the water. If it be re-distilled, .another .portion of the. water in left behind, and .alcohol results; but it takes a series of repetitions to make good proof-spirits of it. . . But sugar is too expensive to be used in this way, and so grains or roots are • substituted; any vegetable, in fact, which contains starch, for—and Mrs. Grahamite, (who don’t allow hcr children any sugar-cake or candy, because “it ruins their teeth and constitutions,” and confines the poor little sufferers to potatoes and. bread for diet,) may as well “post up” on this—starch and sugar are pretty much the same thing. Even the nice roast potato^of our dinner, by Tea-time has become sugar - in our little. private laboratory ' under the waistcoat. To make good whiskey, (let. the conversion of that potato just mentioned, go a little further, and it would make second- rate whiskey in one’s stomach,) the gi'ain used should -be' malted, that is, allowed to sprout, which converts its starch to sugar; and that is the reason that broad from “grown wheat” is so sweet.. Then it must be mashed,” that 'is, stirred up
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