Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/89

Rh the time for improving the spirits desired before payment of the tax. 2. Prohibiting the withdrawal of alcoholic liquors from bond until they have been in the warehouse at least twelve months; for the reason that new spirits, although they may be pure, are not fit for internal use, and should not be placed upon the market for sale until their constituent elements are thoroughly combined by age. 3. Prohibiting (if it can be done constitutionally) the mixing or compounding different kinds of alcoholic liquors, particularly those made from grain with those made from fruit, or the adulteration of the same by the addition of any deleterious or injurious substances. Heavy penalties to follow every violation and conviction.

Various contrivances have been adopted, both in this and foreign countries, for the purpose of producing a kind of artificial age, and various compounds have been used to accomplish the desired result, and to a certain extent have been successful in deceiving the novice or uninitiated; but, on the whole, you might as well try to put a mature brain, developed in all its manly proportions, upon the shoulders of a youth, as to try to make new spirits old, minus the element of time, and the necessary accompanying environments.

A company in Boston, Massachusetts, claim to purchase the oldest liquors they can find in distillery bonded warehouses (three years old), and to purify and increase their mellowness by forcing warm air through them, thereby oxidizing the fusel-oil (or heavier alcohols), and expelling into the open air the light, poisonous ethers, leaving the liquors free from the aldehydes which stupefy and destroy the brain tissues. The air is first passed through a chemical solution (Professor Tyndall's well-known method), which deodorizes as well as destroys all germs of animal or vegetable origin; and after being thus treated, analysis shows it to be pure atmospheric air, 79 parts nitrogen, and 21 parts oxygen. This purified air is then heated to a certain temperature, and, with the aid of a pump, forced through pipes with almost infinitesimal perforations, so as to bring the greatest amount of surface of air in contact with the greatest amount of surface of liquor in the shortest space of time, warming the liquors and producing a violent agitation, which process, undoubtedly, accelerates the union and assimilation of the constituent elements, and, they also claim, eliminates the poisonous gases. The liquors are then filtered by the best known methods to free them from any remaining débris.

But to return to the distillery: you will see that the processes which the grain has gone through of mashing, fermenting, and the extraction of the spirits from the beer by distillation, and the placing of the completed product in the distillery bonded warehouse, are all done under the supervision of a Government officer, and thus far the distiller has had no opportunity, even if he had any desire, to adulterate the liquor. Any distiller who wishes to establish a reputation for manufacturing a fine article, is as much interested in keeping his liquor