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How to Prepare Mash
water to make a thin paste. Then boil two ounces of hops in a quart of water, and when cold take out the hops and throw them away. Then dilute one quart of malt in a quart of water. Mix, cold, the hop water, paste and malt well together, and add half a pound of leaven. Cover the jar containing the mixture with a piece of cloth, and keep it three or four hours in some warm place until it rises. The fermentation will be perfect after the whole has risen and then sunk down. Then add two gallons of the mash, stir the whole, mix it with 80 gallons of the mash, and begin the fermentation. This recipe is the very best for Rye Whiskey. No. 2.
To 80 gallons mash, add one gallon brewer's yeast, and half a pound carbonate of ammonia dissolved in a pint of water. Stir well, and begin the fermentation. Good for New England Rum.
No. 3.
To 80 gallons of mash, add one gal. yeast, five quarts of malt and one pound of molasses. Dilute the malt with two quarts of water, and add the molasses. Keep the whole in a warm place until it rises, as described in No. 1. Add the yeast to the mash and stir, afterwards add the molasses and malt and stir again. Then begin the fermentation. Good for Rye Whiskey.
How to Prepare Mash for New England Rum.
FOR A STILL BY STEAM OR FIRE.
To prepare 80 gallons mash, reduce the molasses 18 degrees by the saccharometer, add yeast No. 2, and stir 256 DISTILLATION WITH OR WITHOUT A HEATER. well. Let it ferment at a temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit, until the mash is reduced to 0. But as it is very difficult to get such a reduction, the operator may begin to distil when the mash marks 2 or 3 degrees by the saccharometer. Charge three-fourths of the still, and begin distilling.
How to Prepare Mash for Rye Whiskey.
FOR A STILL BY STEAM OR FIRE.
To prepare 80 gallons mash, grind the rye into coarse powder, then charge the fermenting tubs in the proportion of 110 lbs. of rye to 80 gals. of water, and mix yeast No. 1 or 3. Let it ferment at a temperature of 75 or 80 degrees Fahrenheit, until the fermentation is completed. The fermentation will be perfect after the mash rises and sinks. When this is done, charge threefourths of the still and begin distilling. *** In preparing the mash, the operator may use all rye, as directed above-this makes the best quality of whiskey-or use three-fifths rye and two-fifths corn, or three-fifths corn and two-fifths rye.
Distillation With or Without a Heater.
Distillers usually employ a heater to hasten the process of distillation. When the heater is employed, the mash passes from the fermenting tubs into the heater. During the time occupied in distilling over the charge of the still, it is necessary to keep a heat of 125 degrees in the heater. The mash passes directly from the heater into the still by means of a pipe or gutter, according to the general arrangement of the apparatus. Distil until the spirit which runs from the worm
This page is not a beverage recipe in any ordinary sense: it is working instruction for a commercial still, and the final steps take the fermented mash into a worm and condenser. The notes below explain what the terms mean and why the procedure cannot be followed in a domestic kitchen.
- Distillation is the barrierEverything from "charge three-fourths of the still" onward is beverage distilling. In the United States and many other jurisdictions, distilling spirits for consumption without a federal permit and bonded premises is an offence regardless of scale, and the apparatus itself is subject to registration; a few countries do permit small-scale home distilling. This is not a matter of technique that can be adjusted.
- The specific physical hazardA charged still is a closed vessel full of flammable vapour heated by steam or direct fire. Ethanol vapour ignites well below the boiling point of the wash, and an obstructed worm or an over-filled still turns the apparatus into a pressure vessel. The text's own instruction to fill only three-quarters leaves headspace against boil-over, but it does not eliminate the risk.
- Methanol and the fore-shotsThe page stops mid-sentence at the point where the operator judges "the spirit which runs from the worm" — that is, the cuts. The head of a run carries low-boiling volatiles, chiefly acetaldehyde with some methanol, and nineteenth-century commercial practice depended on a trained operator's judgment and on rectification steps not given here.
- Carbonate of ammonia in yeast No. 2Half a pound of ammonium carbonate per 80 gallons acted as a nitrogen feed for sluggish molasses fermentation. The quantity is given (half a pound dissolved in a pint of water), but no purity or grade is specified.
- "Leaven" and "brewer's yeast"Leaven here is a piece of live sourdough or barm — a mixed culture of yeast and lactic bacteria, not a measured strain. Brewer's yeast meant fresh slurry skimmed from a working beer, which is not a retail article today.
- The saccharometer readings"Reduce the molasses 18 degrees" refers to a period saccharometer scale, probably a Baumé-type, not Brix or specific gravity as read today, and "until the mash is reduced to 0" means fermented out. The numbers do not transfer to a modern hydrometer without knowing which instrument the author owned.
- A quart of maltMalt is measured by volume, not weight, throughout — a quart of ground malted barley diluted in a quart of water, used as a source of diastatic enzyme to convert the raw rye starch.
- If you want to read it as brewingThe fermentation portion describes a recognisable grain wash: 110 lb rye to 80 gallons of water, pitched and held at 75-80F until it rises and sinks. That is historically interesting. The book's purpose, however, is the still, and a current, properly licensed source should be consulted by anyone with a legitimate reason to work with spirits.
The French Wine and Liquor Manufacturer belongs to a distinctly nineteenth-century American genre: the trade manual sold to wholesalers, saloon keepers and rectifiers who bought raw spirit in bulk and turned it into branded goods. Books of this kind sat on the same shelf as formularies for colouring, sweetening and "ageing" young whiskey overnight, practices of the sort that campaigners for the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897 and later federal labelling rules are often said to have had in view. The two mashes given here mark the period's two great spirit traditions on the eastern seaboard he of of the two and tied to the Caribbean sugar trade, and rye for the whiskey of Pennsylvania and Maryland. The offhand note that the operator may use all rye, or three-fifths rye and two-fifths corn, or the reverse, records exactly the kind of proportion-juggling that later gave way to the minimum grain percentages set by American whiskey standards of identity.