5. When the purest spirit is intended to be drawn from the grain, the fermented wash ought to be suffered to settle, till it becomes transparent. The dispatch, with which the distillery is generally carried on, often prevents this useful circumstance taking place, and occasions a want of vinosity in the liquor. In many cases, the extraordinary charges of extracting the grist from malted corn, in the manner, which has been directed for drinks intended a short space to be kept, and of suffering the fermented wash to be meliorated by time, until it becomes vinous and spontaneously transparent, might be abundantly repaid. Yet, if hurry must be a part of the distiller’s business, he should at least make such extractions as admit of the speediest fermentation and the readiest pellucidity. He cannot expect corn spirits to equal the brandies of France, unless his worts are similar to the wines distilled in that kingdom, where those used for this purpose are weak, fine, and tending to acidity.[42] He would therefore secure to himself the greatest probability of success, if he employed only malted corn in his grist, this of the best kind, well germinated to form a saccharine basis, slack dried, and resolved, with weak extracts, to preserve into the must a proper proportion of vinosity. If he intended this wash to be formed into a pure spirit, it should be allowed time to become transparent; he might regulate his extracts by such heats as have been fixed for common small beer, brewed when the heat of the air is at the lowest fermentable degree, though perhaps heats less than these, when dispatch is required, might better answer his purpose, especially as the length used in the distillery is nearly the same with that which brewers use for the liquor here referred to. With hot waters to attempt to force from the grain more strength or more oils, than such as will form a clean tasteless spirit, is, in the distillery, a real loss and a fundamental error. By too strong heats, more oils are forced into the must than can be converted in spirits; and fermentation being, by this over charge, in some measure, clogged and impeded, a less yield is made, and the liquor obtained of a rank and often empyreumatic taste. 6. Why are the brandies of Spain inferior to those prepared in France? The wines of the last country are the growth of a weaker sun; they contain no more oils than can be assimilated by fermentation, and form a clean, dry, nutty spirit. The Spanish wines abounding with more oleaginous than acid parts, this over proportion becomes not only useless, but hurtful in the still, and produces the rankness observed in Spanish brandies. The cleanness of the spirit arises, in great measure, from the weakness of the must, and its vinosity from a less proportion of oils to the salts. This seems to be the reason why the most grateful spirits are produced from wines unable to bear the sea, or to be long kept.