against by tile greatest Caution you can pos- 
sibly take. 
It conduces to meliorate compound spirits, 
when the ingredients of which they are made 
are infused in sp'tritover-night, before they are 
distilled ; which spirit must cover the ingre- 
dients, and being measured, you must allow 
what they measured out of the quantity you 
put into your still, so that both the spirits in 
which the ingredients are infused, and the 
other which you measure into your still, must 
together make up tire intended quantity ; and 
let all your ingredients, according to their 
several kinds, be bruised, sliced, or otherwise 
separated, before their infusion, if you have 
time and opportunity. 
Take particular care that no manner of 
grease, tallow, soap, or any other unctuous 
matter, get or fall into your pieces, tubs, 
fundjets, or cans ; because they injure the 
proof of the goods, and although their 
strength should be very high, yet they 
will apparently fall as flat as water, and 
then their strength can only be ascertain- 
ed by the hydrometer. Above all things, be- 
ware of lighted candles, torches, papers, or 
other combustible matter, being brought too 
near your still, or any vessel where your 
goods are contained, which are subject to 
take lire upon very slight occasions. You 
must take care to have your stove-chimney 
and Hue often swept or cleaned; both 
to prevent the danger of its taking tire, and 
to make your Hue, or kiln-chimney, draw 
the better, . whereby your stove-fire will be 
first lighted, and afterwards continued , with 
less trouble. 
It is best for preserving the strength and 
flavour of your goods, that as they come off 
your still into your cans, exactly Idled up to 
the mark of a four or live gallon measure, 
they be emptied into the casks they are to 
be kept in ; always noting, or keeping an 
account of, the several cans or quantity of 
goods to be put by ; which must be made up 
to their several proportions, according to the 
quality or kind of goods so to be made up ; 
which is, or must be, by adding so much li- 
quor or pump-water, as completes the same. 
And in dulcifying your goods, first weigh the 
sugar you intend to put in; then dissolve it in 
one or more cans of the water, with which 
you make up your goods ; bruising all the 
lumps of the sugar, and stirring it very well 
with a rummager in your cans, till all is dis- 
solved: and then emptying it into your other 
goods; and mixing all well together, by 
drawing off several cans of the goods at the 
cocks, and putting them in again at the bungs ; 
and then rummage all well Together, till they 
are perfectly well mixed and compounded. 
When you have made up your goods to 
the quantity and quality you intendjifhat they 
may become line and clear; all your goods 
which are made proof will without any art or 
composition settle, and become line and clear, 
within one or two days at most; but goods 
that are reduced below proof, the weaker they 
; are made in strength, the longer they are in 
becoming line or saleable. To every hogs- 
head of Geneva, or strong waters, put live or 
six ounces of alum powdered so as to go 
through a coarse hair-sieve, and mixed in 
three or four gallons of the goods, well 
stirred or dissolved in your cans ; and then 
put to your whole quaytitypruinmaged and 
very well stirred togeth*, some cans of goods 
DISTILLATION. 
being drawn off, and put to the goods again, 
to mix them the better ; and the Geneva 
will be clear in one day, and the other in two 
or three days. 
When your distilled goods are finished, 
being set upon a stilly on or pair of guntfees, 
in order to their being drawn off, you must 
let the bungs of the casks continue open, till 
they become line and lit for use : then you 
may put the bungs in, but not too hard, and 
set a foreset or a plughole, and a foreset or 
plug put slightly, m a proper place of your 
casks, to take out or loosen, to give vent 
when you draw off any goods : it is a vulgar 
error to suppose that goods are materially 
injured or weakened by the bungs being left 
open ; for where there is any quantity of goods 
of any tolerable body or strength, they re- 
ceive no manner of injury from it, but mel- 
low and clear more and more by having good 
vent either by bung or foreset. 
You may make any goods deeper or 
lighter coloured, by dulcifying with browner 
or finer sugar. And as all common goods 
bear a low price, they are always sweetened 
with the cheapest brown sugars, which com- 
monly make them of a deep amber colour ; 
which by long custom and usage has so pre- 
vailed with the populace, that goods of a 
lighter colour, occasioned by being dulcified 
with better sugar, are less accounted of; 
whereas line goods, which are generally 
drunk by persons of judgment and distinguish- 
ing palates, m ust be made up with fine sugars ; 
and the clearer and lighter colour they are,the 
more acceptable and valuable to those who 
know what they buy ; and some persons are 
so nice this way, as to dulcify with loaf-sugar, 
but the sugars in your receipts specified are 
what will give a general satisfaction to all your 
customers. 
When you first draw off any goods lately 
distilled, that which lies next the cork will 
not be clear, or left line, according as the 
goods have been a longer or shorter time 
distilled; and must be set aside till you have 
drawn off what line goods you have pre- 
sent occasion for; and then you may put 
what you first drew in at the bung, and it 
will settle in a very little time ; and when any 
of your standard or other casks are near out, 
or to be emptied or drawn off, let an the bot- 
toms be drawn into one of your cans, and first 
put one, two, or three gallons of water accord- 
ing to the size of your cask, to wash out the 
cask ; and let your first water with which 
the cask is washed be put among your feints ; 
and what water you wash clean out with must 
be cast away; then take your can of bottoms, 
and first hanging up your flannel sleeve in 
some convenient place, put your bottoms into 
it all at once, if your bag will hold it. The 
first runnings of the bag will be foul, till 
all the porous parts of the bag are filled up 
with the sediment that is amongst the bot- 
toms of the casks ; and when they run fine, 
you may take away the foul goods, and put 
a clean vessel to receive the fine spirits; and 
when the bag is run nearly out, you may put 
in it what goods first run foul when the bot- 
toms were put into the bag, and let the bag 
hang till all the good? be quite run off from the 
sediment, which must then be cast away, but 
the fine goods, so filtred through the tiannel 
sleeve, will be as good and wholesome as any 
of the rest; and the bottoms of fine goods, 
which are much more valuable, must be fil- 
535 
trecl, or put through blotting-paper, folded 
in four parts, one part or leaf to be opened 
funnelwise, and made capable to receive 
what it will hold of the bottoms being 
put into the upper part of a large tin funnel: 
which will filtre off all the goods from the 
sediment. 
When you are to buy any brandies or spi- 
rits, do not consent to take them by measure; 
but having tasted and tried them in a phial, 
insist upon having them by weight, at seven 
pounds three quarters to eacli gallon, and 
the stronger spirits will be lighter than what 
is reduced. 
It may not be here improper to insert some 
certain rules observed by distillers in drawing 
off and making up their distilled goods: viz* 
when you perceive about two-third parts of the 
first quantity you put into your still is come 
off; then be often trying your goods in a glass 
or phial ; and when you see that the bell, or 
proof, immediately falls down and does not 
continue a good while on the surface, then 
take away the can of goods, and substitute 
another vessel to receive the feints ; which, 
if suffered to run among the goods, would 
cause a disagreeable relish, and be longer in 
fining down: whereas the feints being kept 
separate, the goods will be clean and well- 
tasted, when made up with liquor to their 
due quantity. 
It will much improve your goods, to throw 
into your still along with your goods, when 
first charged, about six ounces of bay salt to 
every ten gallons of spirit ; and so propor- 
tionably, more or less, to a greater or less 
quantity of spirits ; by this means the goods 
will better cleanse themselves and separate 
from their phlegmatic parts, and the spirits 
so dephlegmatea will ascend and come over 
much cleaner and finer in distillation. 
One very great desideratum among dis- 
tillers of this country is, a method of imitat- 
ing the foreign spirits, brandy, rum, gin, &c. 
to a tolerable degree of perfection ; and not- 
withstanding the many attempts that are daily 
made for this purpose, the success in general 
has been but very indifferent. The general 
method of distilling brandies in France differs 
in nothing from that practised here in work- 
ing from malt-wash or molasses; nor are they 
in the least more cleanly or exact in the ope- 
ration. They only observe more particularly 
to throw a little of the natural ley into the 
still along with the wine, as finding this gives 
their spirit the flavour for which it is gene- 
rally admired abroad. But though brandy 
is extracted from wine, experience tells us, 
that there is a great difference in the grapes 
from which the wine is made. Every soil, 
every climate, every kind of grapes, varies 
with regird to the quantity and quality of 
the spirit extracted from, "them. A large 
quantity of brandy is distilled in France dur- 
ing the time of the vintage; for all those poor 
grapes that prove unfit for wine, are usually 
first gathered, pressed, their juice fermented, 
and directly distilled. This rids them of 
their poor wines at once, and leaves their 
casks empty for the reception of better. It is 
a general rule with them not to distil wine 
that will fetch any price as wine; for in this 
state the profits obtained are vastly greater 
than when reduced to brandies. The large 
stock of small wines, with which they are al- 
most over-run in France, sufficiently accounts 
