i;o. 144.] 369 



Mr. Goodrich said that all the cheap liquor now being exported 

 (0 France will come back real French brandy. 



Prof. Mapes gave a learned disquisiition on the same subject, in 

 which he adverted to the process resorted to by our wholesale 

 grocers of making " genuine brandy," which was manufactured 

 from " old rye," rum, and cogniac brandy, run through different 

 worms, fresh made and fresh ground charcoal, into a common re- 

 ceptacle, and formed what liquor dealers call the "pure spirits," 

 which, added the Professor, is, if a man does drink at all, the 

 most constitutional, as it is divested of those noxious oils which 

 prevail to a greater extent in the purest cogniac than in other 

 liquors. He also stated the interesting fact, that what we receive 

 here as " pure olive oil" is nothing more nor less than the sur- 

 plus lard sent by our western pork merchants to France, where 

 the transformation takes place. 



Since the failure of the grape crop in France, the brandy makers 

 have been driven to various shifts to obtain the raw material, and 

 for the last three years large quantities of the results of their beet 

 root, used in the making of sugar, has been distilled into a species 

 of rum, which by being passed through pulverized charcoal, is 

 robbed of its oils, and thus rendered a neutral spirit known in this 

 country as pure spirit. It is colorless, and without smell or taste, 

 except the peculiar biting property which is common to alcohol 

 of all kinds. 



The French brandy maker, instead of sending us the pure 

 brandy distilled from the grape, has given us a compound made 

 -of a few gallons of cogniac brandy added to some ten times its 

 bulk of this beet root spirit. 



The foreign demand for brandy, however, has become so great, 

 that even this supply has proved inadequate, and thousands of 

 gallons of pure spirit made from corn and rye, are now being 

 shipped from this country, for the use of the French brandy 

 maker. 



Charcoal with us is so much cheaper than in France that our 

 distillers are enabled to make pure spirit, pay the freight to 

 [Assembly, No. 144.] X 



