The Practical Distiller by Samuel McHarry (best book recommendations TXT) 📕

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 is most convenient is taken, as pine or chesnut; indeed I have seen poplar tubs in use for mashing, which is very wrong, as a distiller by not having his hogsheads of good wood, may lose perhaps the price of two sets of hogsheads in one season. For instance, a farmer is about to erect a distillery, and is convenient to a mountain, abounding in chesnut or pine, which from its softness and the ease with which it may be worked, its convenience for dispatch sake, is readily chosen for his mashing hogsheads.—To such selection of wood, I offer my most decided disapprobation, from my long experience, I know that any kind of soft wood will not do in warm weather. Soft porus wood made up into mashing tubs when full of beer and under fermentation, will contract, receive or soak in so much acid, as to penetrate nearly thro' the stave, and sour the vessel to such a degree, in warm weather, that no scalding will take it out—nor can it be completely sweetened until filled with cold water for two or three days, and then scalded; I therefore strongly recommend the use of, as most proper

White Oak.

Disapproving of black, tho' next in order to white oak staves for all the vessels about the distillery ... as being the most durable of close texture, easily sweetened ... and hard to be penetrated by acids of any kind, tho' sometimes the best white oak hogsheads may sour, but two or three scaldings will render them perfectly sweet ... if white oak cannot be had, black oak being of the next best in quality may be used ... and again I enter my protest against pine, chesnut, poplar, and every kind of soft porus wood.

If possible, or if at all convenient, have the vessels iron bound and painted, to prevent worms and the weather from injuring them, using one good wood hoop on the bottom to save the chine.

ART. II. To sweeten Hogsheads by scalding.

When you turn your vessels out of doors (for it is esteemed slothful and a lazy mode to scald them in the still house,) you must wash them clean with your scrubbing brush, then put in sixteen or twenty gallons boiling water—cover it close for about twenty minutes, then scrub it out effectually with your scrubbing broom, then rinse your vessel well with a couple buckets clean cold water, and set them out to receive the air—this method will do in the winter, provided they are left out in the frost over night—but in summer, and especially during the months of July and August, this mode will not do—it is during those extreme warm months in our latitude, that the vessels are liable to contract putrid particles, which may be corrected by the following mode of making

Hogsheads perfectly sweet.

Scald them twice, as above directed, then light a brimstone match, flick it on the ground, turn your hogshead down over it, let it stand until the match quits burning, this operation is necessary once a week—a method I have found effectual.

ART. III. To sweeten Hogsheads by burning.

When you have scalded your hogsheads well, put into each, a large handful of oat or rye straw, set it on fire, and stir it till it is in a blaze, then turn the mouth of the hogshead down; the smoke will purify and sweeten the cask. This process should be repeated every other day, especially during summer—it will afford you good working casks, provided your yeast be good, and your hogsheads are well mashed.

There ought always to be in a distillery more vessels than are necessary for immediate use, that they may alternately be exposed to the frost and air one night at least before brought into service, always bearing in mind that the utmost attention to cleanliness is necessary, in order to afford such yield from the grain, or fruit, as may be requisite to compensate for the expense and labor of extracting spirits—and moreover, that the exercise of the finest genius possessed by man is scarcely capable of taking from small grain, all the spirit it contains:.... good materials will not suffice ... the most marked attention is indispensably necessary to yeast; a mind capable of judging of fermentation in all its stages ... a close adherence to the manner of using the ingredients ... preparing them, and the use of sweet vessels, with great industry and a knowledge to apply it at the proper moment, are all necessary to enable the accomplishment of the desired end.

Note ... In scalding your hogshead I would recommend the use of a shovel full of ashes, which will scald more sharply.

SECTION III. ARTICLE I. To Mash Rye in the common mode.

Take four gallons cold water to each hogshead, add one gallon malt, stir it well with your mashing stick, until the malt is thoroughly wet—when your still boils, put in about sixteen gallons boiling water, then put in one and an half bushels of chopped rye, stirring it effectually, until there is no lumps in it, then cover it close until the still boils, then put in each hogshead, three buckets or twelve gallons boiling water, stirring it well at the same time—cover it close—stir it at intervals until you perceive your rye is scalded enough, which you will know by putting in your mashing stick, and lifting thereon some of the scalded rye, you will perceive the heart or seed of the rye, like a grain of timothy seed sticking to the stick, and no appearance of mush, when I presume it will be sufficiently scalded—it must then be stirred until the water is cold enough to cool off, or you may add one bucket or four gallons of cold water to each hogshead, to stop the scalding.

I have known this process succeed well with an attentive distiller.

ART. II. The best method of distilling Rye.

Take four gallons boiling, and two gallons cold water—put it into a hogshead, then stir in one and a half bushels chopped rye, let it stand five minutes, then add two gallons cold water, and one gallon malt, stir it effectually—let it stand till your still boils, then add sixteen gallons boiling water, stirring it well, or until you break all the lumps—then put into each hogshead, so prepared, one pint coarse salt, and one shovel full of hot coals out of your furnace. (The coals and salt have a tendency to absorb all sourness and bad smell, that may be in the hogshead or grain;) if there be a small quantity of hot ashes in the coals, it is an improvement—stir your hogsheads effectually every fifteen minutes, keeping them close covered until you perceive the grain scalded enough—when you may uncover, if the above sixteen gallons boiling water did not scald it sufficiently, water must be added until scalded enough—as some water will scald quicker than others—it is necessary to mark this attentively, and in mashing two or three times, it may be correctly ascertained what quantity of the kind of water used will scald effectually—after taking off the covers, they must be stirred effectually, every fifteen minutes, till you cool off—for which operation, see "Cooling off." To those who distill all rye, I recommend this method, as I have found it to answer every kind of water, with one or two exceptions.

Distillers will doubtless make experiments of the various modes recommended and use that which may prove most advantageous and convenient.

ART. III. To Mash two thirds Rye and one third Corn in Summer.

This I have found to be the nicest process belonging to distilling—the small proportion of corn, and the large quantity of scalding water, together with the easy scalding of rye, and the difficulty of scalding corn, makes it no easy matter to exactly hit the scald of both; but as some distillers continue to practice it, (altho' not a good method in my mind, owing to the extreme nice attention necessary in performing it.) In the following receipt I offer the best mode within my knowledge, and which I deem the most beneficial, and in which I shew the process and mode pursued by other distillers.

Take four gallons cold water,