The Daily Alaska empire. [volume] (Juneau, Alaska) 1926-1964, 1944-03-27

If you were to make whiskey, you
would need a few simple ingredients.
To begin with, you would need grain;
corn, or rye, or barley, or wheat, or a
mixture of al, of them. You would
grind the grain to a meal; then you
would mix the meal with water and
cook it. Next. you would take some
malt grain that has been terminated
by moisture and heat, because the
malt will convert the grain starches in
your mash into fermentable sugars.
You would then add some distiller's
yeast to transform the fermentable
sugars into alcohol and carbon diox-
ide, principally. The carbon dioxide
would pass out into the air, and the
alcohol would remain.
At this stage of the proceedings you
would have what is termed ''distiller's
beer" which you would then heat to
point where it becomes vapor, thereby
separating the alcohol and other
desirable ingredients from the spent
grain. This vapor would then pass on
through pipes or coils which cools it
and makes it a liquid. And, now, you
would have raw or young whiskey.
You would now take the raw whis-
key and store it for aging, in new,
charred oak casks, where it will draw
certain eextractives' from the wood.
The whiskey, which you have just
made, has developed certain flavor
elements as result of the fermenta-
ton and distillation processes. These,
in addition to the flavor elements
drawn from the wood over period of
years, impart to whiskey its we'll
known taste, so that you can recog-
nize it just as you can recognize coffee
by its flavor. Simple-isn't it?
OF course, you are not going to
make your own whiskey. We just
wanted to remind you that man has
really very little to do in whiskey
making; nature does most of the work.
And now we want to tell you some
thing that is very important. While
anybody can make whiskey, as such,
there is vast difference in the quality
of distilled alcoholic beverages. For
instance, there is the quality of the
grain selected. See what happens to
carload of corn that has just come in
on a side-track at the back door of
modern distillery. A man of science
examines it carefully; he tests it for
bacteria count, for protein, starch
and moisture content. He examines it
carefully to see that the fiinty pro-
tective outer skin of the corn is not
broken, because, when the skin is
broken, infection can set in. He smells
it for mustiness, because musty grain
will do something to whiskey that you
will never get rid of,'even if you aged
the whiskey for twenty years.
The water used is subjected to the
same careful tests. A pure culture of
yeast, which is literally kept in safe,
is used for fermentation. All down the
line there are scientific control steps
from the time the grain enters dis
tillery until the young whiskey goes
to its repose in the charred barrels.
But, we cannot tell all of it in one
short article. We will tell you more
later. So, please don't go away; and
keep on reading these little sketches.
FREE Would you like booklet contain
ing the first ten articles in this series2 Just
Urite your name and address on the back
Of penny postal and send it to me, care of
Schenley International Corporation, $50
Fifth Avenue, Nea0 York !, ~. Y. It's
yours for the asking.
MARK MERIT