the following manner:--A certain quantity of flour is made
into a solid dough, with a little water. It is then taken into the
hands, and water slowly poured over it, while it is kneaded again. The
water runs white, because it carries off the starchy part of the flour;
it runs clear after it is washed sufficiently. There remains in the
hands of the operator a dough, compact, solid, elastic, and reduced to
nearly the half of the flour employed. This dough, a little diluted with
water, and kept in the temperature indicated for the room of
fermentation, passes to the putrid state, and contracts the smell of
spoiled meat. Four pounds of this dough per hogshead, seem to me to be
sufficient to establish a good fermentation. A small quantity of good
vinegar would answer the same purpose, and is a ferment of the second
class.

But are those means indispensable with my process? I do not think so.

1st. The richness of my vinous liquor, and the degree of heat to which I
keep it, tend strongly to make it ferment. In fact, the infusion of the
grain, by taking from it its saccharine part, takes likewise part of its
mucilaginous substance, which is the principle of the spirituous
fermentation, which it establishes whenever it meets with the other
substance.

2dly. The hogsheads themselves are soon impregnated with a fermenting
principle, and communicate it to the liquor that is put into them.

3dly. The rum distiller employs advantageously the residue of his
preceding distillation, to give a fermentation to his new molasses: this
residue has within itself enough of acidity for that purpose. Might not
the residue of the distillation of my vinous liquor have the same
acidity? It contains only the mucilaginous substance already acidulated.
Some gallons of that residue to every hogshead, would, I think, be a
very good ferment.

Lastly. Here is another means which will certainly succeed: it is to
leave at the bottom of each hogshead three or four inches of the vinous
liquor, when transported into the still for distilling. This rising,
which will rapidly turn sour, will form a ferment sufficient to
establish a good fermentation.

The intelligent manager of a distillery must conduct the means I
indicate, towards the end which he proposes to himself, and must
carefully avoid to employ as ferments, those disgusting substances which
cannot fail to bring a discredit on the liquor in which they are known
to be employed.

CHAPTER X