ALCOHOL.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3228, 3 November 1881, Page 4

ALCOHOL.

In the earlier days of human history, tvo may suppose, the free-will gifts of nature ■were sufficient for the wants of man. He lived content with such things a3 he found, and satisfied his thirst with nothing stronger than a draught of milk, or water, Adam's good old wine. But this golden age of temperance had an end, although when, or how, we know not. This much, at least, is certain—that a long way back in history, either by accident or experiment, some one discovered how to make fermented liquors, and mankind speedily became acquainted ■with the properties of alcohol, although the art of calling forth the fiery spirit from its habitation i 9 an attainment of quite modern date. Forming as it does tho intoxicating ingredient m fermented liquors, and having regard. to the enormous consumption of these at the present day, alcohol is a subBtance at once of national importance and general interest. While theoretically obtainable from various chemical substances, practically the whole of our alcohol is derived from starch, sugar, or other saccharine materials ; in this country commonly from grain of various kinds, either malted or tmmalted; while in G-ermany spirits are largely made from potatoes, in France from beetroot and carrots, and in Sweden from the birch and maple. When barley or other grain is steeped in water till it sprouts, and is then carefully dried, it becomes what is termed malt. By this process part of the starch of which the grain is mainly composed has been converted into sugar, and a new substance has been developed known as diastase, a nitrogenous body, which immediately, when the malt is mixed with water, reacts on the remaining starch and transforms it also into sugar, the liquid consequently soon assuming a sweet taste. We have now, in fact, a solution of sugar, which is known as wort ; but we may attain the same end by using unmalted grain, potatoes, pens, bonns, or other starchy material, which, by the addition of dilutesulphm'ic af'd. is convprtnd into a soluble sugar. Having thus obtained a solution of sugar from any of these sources, or still more directly fi'om bpetroot or the " toothsome cane,' yeast is added to the worfc, and the process known as fermentation is rapidly set up, by which the sugar is decomposed into two chief products (alcohol and carbonic acid gas), and several minor ones (glycerine, succinic acid, &c.,) ninety-five out of every hundred parts of sugar being transformed into alcohol and carbonic acid, four parts going to form glycerine, &c, and one part as nourishment to the yeasfc plant, which has multiplied immensely, and now forms a frothy scum upon the surface of the liquid. By the fermentation spirits have been produced, and the object of the next process, the distillation of the fermented wort or wash, is to separate the spirit from the liquid in which it exists. The produce of this operation is an impure spirit known as ' low wines' which has to be redistilled at a lower temperature to get rid of part of the water and the oils with which it is contaminated, the product of this second distillation being the mixture of alcohol and water known as 'whisky,' or 'spirits of wine,' because it was by the distillation of wine that spirits were first obtained. Of late years, however, by means of a modern, invention known as Coffey's still, a purler spirit is obtained by a single distillation than that produced by the double operation with an ordinary 'pot still.' —Chambers' Journal.