Sugar-Beets and Beetroot Distillation. 
81 
an average only 4^ per cent, of sugar, and paid as much per ton 
as lor beets containing on an average from 9 to 10 per cent, o! 
sugar, and yielding of course more than double the amount 
of alcohol. 
2nd. The processes of fermentation were badly managed in 
the former beetroot distilleries ; and 
3rd. A very inferior spirit, which had to be sold at the lowest 
market price, was produced owing chiefly to the imperfect con- 
struction of the rectifying stills then in use. 
Of late years much attention has been bestowed by scientific 
men upon the theory of rectification, and their labours have 
borne good fruit in the improved apparatus, such as Coffee's or 
Savalle's stills, for obtaining pure spirit with comparative ease 
and certainty. 
The latter stills have been satisfactorily tested by the success 
which Mr. Campbell has obtained with them at his distillery at 
Buscot in Berkshire. 
Beetroot distillation, as has been remarked already, in com- 
parison with the manufacture of sugar, is a simple and, I may- 
add, a less expensive operation. 
The machinery required for the manufacture of beetroot-sugar 
is more expensive than the stills and other implements required 
in a beetroot distillery. The buildings of a distillery, more- 
over, can be erected at less expense than those which have to 
be put up in a sugar-factory. 
There is another advantage in growing beetroots for the use 
of the distiller, to which I must briefly allude. Experience on a 
large scale has proved that sugar cannot be profitably manufac- 
tured from beetroots, unless they contain at least 8 per cent, of 
sugar. Now it may happen, and even on the Continent it does 
occasionally happen, that in bad seasons the percentage of sugar 
in the roots is too low to be profitably extracted. In such bad 
seasons the sugar-factory would have either to stand idle or to 
work at a loss, were it not for the fact that beetroots may be 
used profitably for distillery purposes, if they are comparatively 
poor in sugar ; for it has been found that roots containing not 
more than 5^ per cent, of sugar will yield a fair profit when 
they are employed for the production of spirit. In bad seasons 
the whole of the crop may thus be profitably employed, by 
manufacturers of sugar who combine with their '^occupation that 
of distillers. It is further worthy of notice that albuminous 
compounds or saline matters in beets, which so greatly im- 
pede the manufacture of crystallized sugar, exercise no injurious 
influence upon the production of spirit. Hence the distiller 
can make spirit from molasses, or from impure saccharine 
VOL. VII.— S. S. G 
