The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-02-28
HOW WHISKEY is MADE.
The Art as Explained by "A PhiIa
delDhia Expert.
From the Philadelphia Record.

is pretty generally admitted to be the
best judge of liquor in the United
States. You don't have to drink
whisky in order to judge it," Mr. Gall
lagher says. Whisky is a cologne,
and. like a cologne, you judge it by
its odor-its bouquet" He sat at his
roll-top desk, and before him were a
half-dozen little glasses of whisky of
different ages, each glass with a strip
of white paper in it marked a. r."
*" etc. He lifted a glass with a
grave, careful movement and inhaled
its fragrance with a deep breath. Then
he did the same thing with another
glass.
Whisky is a cologne" he repeated.
land it's bouquet tells its quality BY
smelling whisky a young girl or a child
can tell the good from the bad just as
we'll as l can" He extended two glass
es. Here" he said. smell these"
OdOr Told the Difference in Quality.
The odor of the whisky in the first
glass was delicate. powerful rich. 1t
was an odor indescribablY pleasant.
But the odor of the whisky in the sec
ond glass was harsh and sickeningly
sweet with something nauseating and
unwholesome about it. 1t was easy to
see that the first whisky was better
than the second.
"One," said Mr. Gallagher is ten
years old, and worth Sc a gallon. The
other, fresh from the distillery, is worth
S1.60."
This healthy and temperate man of
middle age, who has spent his time
among liquors without drinking them
since his early youth, now begins to
talk about whisky in a very interest
ing way. He said many things of
which the world at large is ignorant.
Who knows, for instance, that a whis-
ky barrel. after it is made, has a fire
built inside it, which chars the wood
to a depth of a quarter of an inch?
Into this barrel. lined permanently in
this way with charcoal, the whisky
as clear in it's original state as gin or
water, is poured; and the charcoal is
what colors it.
What makes whisky, as years pass,
grows so valuable is the shrinkage,"
Mr.. Gallagher said. "A half-barrel
eve age whisky usually in half-b bar
rels) holds twenty-seven gallons. Well
if you fill a half-barrel with whisky
and put it away for ten years, do you
know how much whisky will be left
at the ten years end? There will be
left about six gallons. Sometimes there
will be seven gallons sometimes eight;
but as a rule, twenty-seven gallons
| of whisky dwindles down in ten years
| 10 ABOUT SIX gallOnS.
No Fifty-Year-OId Whiskey.
From this you can see why we
don't have such things as 80, 40 and
| 50-year-old whisky. If you should put
| a barrel of whisky away for &c. 40 or
so years, when you should come to
| open it you would find no liquor there
1t would all have evaporated long
| back We can have 50-year-old wines
| readily enough, because wines may be
| aged in glass, and in that sort of aging
| there is no evaporation to speak of.
But whisky only ages in the wood.
You fill a flask with 1O-year-old whis-
| ky and keep it for a thousand years. 1t
would be 10-year-old whisky just the
save in 1908 as in 1903.
Here in the East we make whisky
| out of rye, with an addition of 20 per
cent. of malt. In the West they make
their whisky out of corn. The Eastern
! liquor is called rye. and the Western
Bourbon. In the. manufacture of
whisky it is important that the very
| best grain be used This grain is
ground to a -four. 1t is put into a
mash tuba deep vesesl about twenty
/ feet in diameter-and water and yeast
are mixed in with it. Rakes hang from
above, and their prongs go like giant
fingers through this mash, stirring it
up and mixing it thoroughly. In a
| the fermenters.
THE fermenters are twenty feet in
| diameter and nine feet high. They
stand in rows like casks; only they are
open at the top. In these big watts
the mash stands and ferments for
three or four days. Thence it passes
to the still. The stills are cisterns of
wood or copper, each eight feet in di-
ameter and twenty feet high. After
the fermented mixture of grain and
water and yeast has been placed in
| them steam is introduced, and a vio-
| lent boiling is set up. AS the boiling
| goes on vapor, a steam, rises from
| the mash. That vapor, that steam, is
the whisky. 1t floats into a pipe that
is surrounded with icy water, and the
| cold changes it from steam to a liquid
At one end of the pipe steam goes in;
| at the other end whisky comes out.
| And that is all there is to say about
the making of whisky.
BIender an Important Man.
GAS important and as scientific a man
| in the whisky business as the distiller
| is the blender. The blender 1t is who
| gives the world good whisky-the finest
| f1avors, the clearest colors, the most
| powerful and the most delicate bou-
quets. Were it not for the blender the
world would not know what whisky at
| it's best can be.
This man must know all the char
acteristics of all the distillers One
plant produces a whisky of excellent
bouquet, but of poor flavor. Another's
product is of good flavor but poor bou-
quet. The blender knows where to go
to get each quality at its best, and
mixing these various WHISTLES in the
proper proportion, he produces blends
that in bouquet and flavor and color
and wholesomeness leave straight whis-
kies far behind. Blending is an art
1t is recognized in the old country no
less than here to be about the most
important part of whisky making.
"All the distilleries make good whis-
ky. That the product of one excels the
product of another in flavor or in odor
is a condition due to the water that
the plants use, and not to any inferior
ity in the stock. The best stock, you
see, is cheap enough The best whisky
when it first comes forth from the still,
is only worth so cents a gallon-plus,
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