Observations on Wood for Hogsheads.
The cheapest and easiest wrought wood is generally most used for making mashing tubs, or hogsheads, and very often for dispatch or from necessity, any wood that is most convenient is taken, as pine or chesnut; indeed I have seen poplar tubs in use for mashing, which is very wrong, as a distiller by not having his hogsheads of good wood, may lose perhaps the price of two sets of hogsheads in one season. For instance, a farmer is about to erect a distillery, and is convenient to a mountain, abounding in chesnut or pine, which from its softness and the ease with which it may be worked, its convenience for dispatch sake, is readily chosen for his mashing hogsheads.—To such selection of wood, I offer my most decided disapprobation, from my long experience, I know that any kind of soft wood will not do in warm weather. Soft porus wood made up into mashing tubs when full of beer and under fermentation, will contract, receive or soak in so much acid, as to penetrate nearly thro' the stave, and sour the vessel to such a degree, in warm weather, that no scalding will take it out—nor can it be completely sweetened until filled with cold water for two or three days, and then scalded; I therefore strongly recommend the use of, as most proper
White Oak.
Disapproving of black, tho' next in order to white oak staves for all the vessels about the distillery ... as being the most durable of close texture, easily sweetened ... and hard to be penetrated by acids of any kind, tho' sometimes the best white oak hogsheads may sour, but two or three scaldings will render them perfectly sweet ... if white oak cannot be had, black oak being of the next best in quality may be used ... and again I enter my protest against pine, chesnut, poplar, and every kind of soft porus wood.
If possible, or if at all convenient, have the vessels iron bound and painted, to prevent worms and the weather from injuring them, using one good wood hoop on the bottom to save the chine.
ART. II.
To sweeten Hogsheads by scalding.
When you turn your vessels out of doors (for it is esteemed slothful and a lazy mode to scald them in the still house,) you must wash them clean with your scrubbing brush, then put in sixteen or twenty gallons boiling water—cover it close for about twenty minutes, then scrub it out effectually with your scrubbing broom, then rinse your vessel well with a couple buckets clean cold water, and set them out to receive the air—this method will do in the winter, provided they are left out in the frost over night—but in summer, and especially during the months of July and August, this mode will not do—it is during those extreme warm months in our latitude, that the vessels are liable to contract putrid particles, which may be corrected by the following mode of making