NEW PROCESS OF PURIFYING ARDENT SPIRITS
Year: 1803

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, CHARLES
WYATT, of New Bridge Street, in the City of London, Merchant, do send
greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Third, by
His Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, bearing date at Westminster, the Twenty-first day of
December, in the forty-fourth year of His reign, did give and grant unto
me, the said Charles Wyatt, my executors, administrators, and assigns, His
special licence, full power, sole privilege and authority, that I, the said
Charles Wyatt, my executors, administrators, and assigns, during the term
of years therein expressed, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and
vend, within England, Wales, the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and in all His
Majesty's Colonies and Plantations abroad, my "NEW PROCESS OF PURIFYING
ARDENT SPIRITS;" in which Letters Patent there is contained a proviso
obliging me, the said Charles Wyatt, under my hand and seal, to cause a
particular description of the nature of my said Invention, and in what manner
the same is to be performed, to be enrolled in His Majesty's High Court
of Chancery within six calendar months next and immediately after the date

page_text: of the said in part recited Letters Patent, as in and by the same, relation
being thereunto had, may more fully and at large appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
Charles Wyatt, do hereby declare that my Invention of a New Process of
Purifying Ardent Spirits consists in using vegetable charcoal as the sole
medium for purifying or sweetening ardent spirits. The means of using it
are various.
By one method the charcoal, previously reduced into fragments or into a
powder, is to be immersed in the spirit requiring purification, and to remain
mixed with it, being frequently agitated untill the spirit be evidently improved
both in taste and odour. It is then to be distilled in the usual way, either
with the charcoal in it or separated from it by drawing off and leaving the
sediment in the vessel in which the purification or sweetening has been
carried on.
By another method the spirit intended to be purified or sweetened, after
having been previously mixed as before described with charcoal, is to be sub-
mitted to distillation, and the steam or vapour arising from the spirit is to be
passed through and come in contact with a body of charcoal in powder or
fragments interposed in a box or case between the still and the condenser.
By a third method the spirit intended for sweetening or purification may be
submitted to distillation without any previous mixture with charcoal, but so
that the steam or vapour shall pass through and in contact with a body of
charcoal in the manner described under the head of the second method. By
this third method two distillations through charcoal may frequently be
necessary. In purifying or sweetening raw malt spirit, I use about twenty-
five pounds weight of charcoal to one hundred gallons of the spirit, and I find
from two to six days, according to the quality of the spirit, to be a sufficient
time for the charcoal to remain in the spirit before distillation; and in some
cases I repeat this immersion with fresh charcoal after the first distillation.
The quantity of charcoal and the duration of the immersion must always be
regulated by the quality of the spirit. A greater or less quantity than is herein
stated cannot be injurious to the process. The charcoal should be pre-
pared or burnt by a process which shall effectually prevent the access of any
smoke to it, and will permit all the volatile parts of the wood to escape.
In witness whereof, I, the said Charles Wyatt, have hereunto set my
hand and seal, this Twenty-first day of June, in the year of our Lord
One thousand eight hundred and four.
CHAS WYATT. (L.S.)

page_text: AND BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the same Twenty-first day of June,
in the year above mentioned, the aforesaid Charles Wyatt came before our
Lord the King in His Chancery, and acknowledged the Specification aforesaid,
and all and every thing therein contained, in form above written. And also
the Specification aforesaid was stamped according to the tenor of the Statute
in that case made and provided.
Inrolled the same Twenty-first day of June in the won how writton