llers, vintager,
cider and vinegar maker, &c. The elastic fluids and volatile principles
that are extricated and escape, formerly so little attended to, are now
better understood. The method of commodiously saving, and
advantageously applying them, and other volatile products, to the
improvement of the fermenting and other fluids, will, I hope, not only
form a new era in the progress of fermenting, brewing, distilling, &c.
but a new source of profit, that may, in time, lead to a recomposition
of those elements from which they were produced, or, at least, the
fermentation of vinous fluids, vinegar, spirit, &c. by resorting to an
inexhaustible source supplied by nature, of these important materials,
and their application to the uses that may be made of that abundance so
easily procurable, and at present so unprofitably wasted. But to
continue our views to the business immediately before us, let us begin
with the several products, by stating that carbonic acid gas, or fixed
air, is copiously extracted from fluids in a state of vinous
fermentation, and sundry mineral and vegetable substances, easily
procurable, for which we have the testimony of our own senses; the same
may be said of hydrogen gas, oxygen gas, &c. Presuming these positions
granted, let us make a short inquiry into the composition of vinous
fluids, &c. Apprehending there are but few people to whom these
observations will be useful, but what will allow that all vinous
fluids, whether intended for beer, wine, cider, &c. are the produce of
saccharine matter, or fermentable matter obtained from the sugar cane,
grain, fruit, &c. and the part which art at present takes in this
beautiful process of nature, is to facilitate her operations in
proportion to observation and experience, in conformity to the object
in view, in making wine, beer, cider, spirit, &c.; or, subsequent to
the vinous, to forward the progress of the acetous fermentation for the
production of vinegar. The saccharine or fermentable matter of
vegetables, consists in what is chemically called hydrogen gas, or
inflammable air; carbonic acid gas, or fixed air; oxygen gas, or vital
air; which last forms nearly one third part of the whole atmosphere,
circumvolving our globe in which we breathe; or, more exactly,
thirty-seven parts of oxygen, and seventy-three of azotic gas, are the
component parts of our atmosphere, except the small proportion of
undecomposed carbonic acid gas there may be found in it.