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