by Anthony Boucherie
Started: February 3Finished: February 7
Notes: The full title of this short book from 1818 is "The Art of Making Whiskey So As to Obtain a Better, Purer, Cheaper and Greater Quantity of Spirit, From a Given Quantity of Grain. Also, The Art of Converting it into Gin." Now with a $10 handle like that, you know the book's got to be good, right? Actually, this is another Kindle freebie I ran across while perusing the free e-books over at Amazon. I'm not sure why, but I keep getting drawn to all these little forgotten books from the 19th Century. They're interesting reading, I'm finding. Also, this one was actually written in and published in Lexington, Kentucky, which happens to be my home town, so that's of added interest. The author is European, originally writing in French, though it seems I read somewhere he was from northern Europe, perhaps Belgium; still, there were relatively quite a few French in early Kentucky as it was once part of the Upper Louisiana region, and Lafayette being a Revolutionary War hero, more and more French were traveling to the Americas at the time. Lexington is even located in Fayette County, which is right next door to Paris, Kentucky, in Bourbon County. Another reason I wanted to read this book is because I'm interested in bourbon, though not so much plain whiskey, because that's the junk they make in Tennessee. ;-)
Mini review: An interesting look at the early days of whiskey making in the United States, but those who wish to study actual distilling processes should look elsewhere because though the author gets into some exactitudes, his writing style is not modern enough to easily make use of his directions.
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