Effects Of This Apparatus

Although the still might contain 400 gallons, there must be only 200

gallons put into it: the rest remaining empty, the vapors develops

themselves, and rise. In that state, the vinous liquor is about one foot

deep, on a surface of 20 feet square: hence two advantages--the first,

that being so shallow, it requires but little fuel to boil; the second,

that the extent of surface gives rise to a rapid evaporation, which

ac elerates the work. This acceleration is such, that six distillations

might be obtained in one day. The spirit contained in the vinous liquor

rises in vapors to the lid of the still, there find the cap and its

pipe, through which they escape into the first urn, by the side pipe

above described, which conducts them to the bottom, where they are

condensed immediately.



But the vapors, continuing to come into the urn, heat it progressively:

the spirituous liquor that it contains rises anew into vapors, escapes

through the cap and pipe, and arrives into the second urn, where it is

condensed as in the first. Here again, the same cause produces the same

effect: the affluence of the heat drawn with the vapors, carries them

successively into the third urn, and from thence into the worm, which

condenses them by the effects of the cold water in which it is immersed.



The urns, receiving no other heat than that which the vapors coming out

of the still can transmit to them, raise the spirit; the water, at least

the greatest part of it, remains at the bottom: hence, what runs from

the worm is alcohol; that is, spirit at 35 deg.. It is easily understood how

the vapors coming out of the still are rectified in the urns, and that

three successive rectifications bring the spirit to a high degree of

concentration: it gets lower only when the vinous liquor draws towards

the end of the distillation. As soon as it yields no more spirit, the

fire is stopped, and the still is emptied in order to fill it up again,

to begin a new distillation.



Each time that the vinous liquor is renewed in the still, the water

contained in the urns must be emptied, through the pipes of discharge at

the bottom.



Metals are conductors of the caloric. The heat accumulated in the

still, rises to the cap, from whence it runs into the urns: with this

difference--that the pewter, of which the cap and pipes are made,

transmits less caloric than copper, because it is less dense: and that

bodies are only heated in reason of their density.



However, a great deal of heat is still communicated to the worm, and

heats the water in which it is immersed. I diminish this inconvenience

by putting a wooden pipe between the worm and the pipe of the third urn.

Wood being a bad conductor of caloric, produces a solution of

continuity, or interruption between the metals. The wood of this pipe

must be soft and porous, and not apt to work by the action of the fire:

however, to avoid its splitting, I wrap it up in two or three doubles of

good paper, well pasted, and dried slowly. This pipe is one foot long,

and hollowed in its length, so as to receive the pewter pipe of the

third urn at one end, and to enter the worm at the other; thereby the

worm is not as hot, since it only receives the heat of the vapors which

it condenses.



Notwithstanding all these precautions, it heats the water in which it is

immersed after a length of time; and whatever care may be taken to renew

it, all the vapors are not condensed, and this occasions a loss of

spirit. I obviate this accident, by adding a second worm to the first:

they communicate by means of a wooden pipe like the above. The effect of

this second worm, rather smaller than the first, is such, that the water

in which it is plunged remains cold, while that of the first must be

renewed very often. By these means, no portion of vapors escape

condensation. The liquor running from the worm is received into a small

barrel, care being taken that it may not lose by the contact of the air

producing evaporation.