The arts and sciences have made great progress; my aim is to diffuse new light on every thing that relates to the formation of spirituous liquors that may be obtained from grains. Most arts and trades are practised without principles, perhaps from the want of the means of information. For the advantage of the distillers of whiskey, I will collect and offer them the means of obtaining from a given quantity of grain, the greatest possible quantity of spirit, purer and cheaper than by the usual methods. I shall then proceed to indicate the methods of converting whiskey into gin, according to the process of the Holland Distillers, without heightening its price. If the principles hereafter developed are followed, the trade of distiller will acquire great advantages, that will spread their influence on agriculture, and consequently on commerce in general. THE ART OF MAKING WHISKEY, &c. CHAPTER I. OF SPIRITUOUS LIQUORS, OR SPIRITS. Spirituous liquors are the produce of vinous ones, obtained by the distillation of these last. The art of making wine is of the remotest antiquity, since it is attributed to Noah; but that of distilling it, so as to extract its most spirituous part, dates only from the year 1300. Arnand de Villeneuve was the inventor of it, and the produce of his Still appeared so marvellous, that it was named Aqua-Vitae, or _Water of Life_, and has ever since continued under that denomination in France; Voltaire and reason say that it might, with far more propriety, be called _Aqua-Mortis_, or Water of Death. This liquor, called in English, _Brandy_, received from the learned the name of _Spirit of Wine_; time improved the art of making it still stronger by concentration, and in that state it is called _Alcohol_. All spirit is the distilled result of a wine, either of grapes, other fruits, or grains; it is therefore necessary to have either wine, or any vinous liquor, in order to obtain spirits. CHAPTER II. OF THE FORMATION OF VINOUS LIQUORS WITH GRAINS, IN ORDER TO MAKE SPIRITS. The art of extracting wine from the juice of the grape, not being the object of this book, I shall confine myself to what is necessary and useful to the distillers of whiskey; it is therefore of the vinous liquor extracted from grains, that I am going to speak. The formation of that kind of liquor is founded upon a faculty peculiar to grains, which the learned chymist, Fourcroy, has called _saccharine fermentation_. Sugar itself does not exist in gramineous substances; they only contain its elements, or first principles, which produce it. The saccharine fermentation converts those elements into sugar, or at least into a saccharine matter; and when this is developed, it yields the eminent principle of fermentation, without which there exists no wine, and consequently no spirit.