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Alcohol (Toes carrots beets grasses)

toes, carrots, beets, grasses, and various other sources, is the same in quality, provided all the other solid and liquid impurities be removed. A single distillation of the spirituous portions of those liquids will not effect their purification, and where volatile oils are present, distillation merely, how often soever repeated, will not separate them, for these volatile impurities pass over during distillation; hence, the spirit procured from wines by simple distillation will have their peculiar flavor; beer, when distilled, will, for the same reason, yield alcohol possessing the abominable taste of the yeast; malt spirit will have the disagreeable qualities of faints from the presence of an oil of an acrid, bad taste; and potatoe spirit the physical characteristics of fusil oil, or oil of potatoes. Thus, the disagreeableness or fragrancy of distilled products is, as in the case of malt and potatoe spirit, due to the presence of an essential oil, derived from the source of the alcoholic liquid. This and other impurities may be driven off by redistillation or by rectification through maple charcoal. ( See article "On Distillation.") The chief object of the distiller in rectifying spirit is the removal of these oily bodies in order to procure a pure alcohol, from which, by the aid of other ingredients, he can fabricate liquors imitating those more costly products which are formed naturally, such as the better varieties of brandy, gin, whiskey, and all the other kinds of liquors and cordials which are in daily request as favorite beverages with the community. Common spirits, as brandy, gin, whiskey, etc., generally contain 50 or 52 per cent of alcohol, in other words, they are about half water and half absolute alcohol, and are associated with coloring matter, volatile oil, and various acids, salts, ethers, and other flavoring matter.

Proof spirit, which is the standard by means