ch of making yeast, and
studying the cause and progress of fermentation, proceeding with
numerous experiments, and always studying to discover the cause of every
failure, or change, or difference in the yield. I could, after four
years attention, tell the cause of such change, whether in the water,
yeast, fermentation, quality of the grain, chopping the grain, or in
mashing, and carefully corrected it immediately. By a thus close and
indefatigable attention, I brought it to a system, in my mind, and to a
degree of perfection, that I am convinced nothing but a long series of
practice could have effected.

From my record of most improved experiments, I cheerfully gave
receipts to those who applied, and after their adoption obtaining some
celebrity, I found applications so numerous, as to be troublesome, and
to be impossible for me to furnish the demands gratis, of consequence, I
was compelled to furnish to some, and refuse others; a conduct so
pregnant with partiality, and a degree of illiberality naturally gave
rise to murmurs.

My friends strongly recommended a publication of them, the plan
requiring the exercise of talents, order and method, with which I
presumed myself not sufficiently versed, I for sometime obstinately
refused, but at length and after reiterated solicitation, I consented to
enter on the talk, under a flattering hope of affording useful
information to those of my country engaged in the distillation of
spirits from the growth of our native soil, which together with the
following reasons, I offer as the only apology.

1st. I observed many distillers making fortunes, whilst others
exercising an equal share of industry, and of equal merit were sinking
money, owing to a want of knowledge in the business.

2d. In taverns I often observed foreign liquors drank in preference to
those of domestic manufacture, though really of bad quality, possessing
pernicious properties acquired from ingredients used by those in our
commercial towns, who brew and compose brandies, spirits, and wines,
often from materials most injurious to health, and this owing to so much
bad liquor being made in our country, from which the reputation of
domestic spirit has sunk. Whilst, in fact, we can make domestic spirits
of various materials, which with a little management and age, will be
superior to any of foreign produce.

3d. By making gin, &c. as good if not better, we might in a few years,
meet those foreign merchants in their