Important: Safety Warning
This page directs the use of hazardous substances — such as benzine, gasoline, lye, or strong acids — for household tasks. These materials are highly flammable, corrosive, or poisonous, and the practices described have caused fires, burns, and poisonings.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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And Liquors
As it is absolutely necessary to use pure rectified spirit as a basis for imitating brandy and gin, and making fine cordials, it is very often requisite to employ some unerring test to determine the presence of fusil or grain oil. In order to accomplish this result, the following simple experiment may be tried with success:- Dissolve ten grains of nitrate of silver in one ounce of pure distilled water. Then take half a tumblerful of the suspected liquor and drop into it twenty-five drops of the above solution; and if the liquid should contain any grain oil, it will assume the form of a black powder and float on the surface. The action of this test is not always immediate, for it is sometime necessary to wait from one to thirty hours when testing a sample of alcohol which has been well rectified, before any evidence of the oil or powder can be perceived floating on the liquid, and even then it is necessary to expose the glass to a strong light before the powder can be discovered.
On Distillation and the Still.-(SEE APPENDIX.) The Alembic, or still, is one of the most ancient of