BRANDY, a spirituous liquor produced by the dis tillation of wines, is prepared in most of the nine coun tries of Europe. The principal manufactures of this spirit are in France, particularly in Languedoc and An jou, from whence comes the well known Cogniac brandy. The apparatus for the distillation of brandy is extremely simple, and is composed of three parts : the alembic, a cylindrical copper boiler for containing the fermented wines, is enclosed in brick-work in the usual manner of fixed boilers, and furnished with a proper fire place, with a flue and dampers. It is about 28 inches in height, and 23 in diameter, and holds nearly 320 quarts. It is flattened at the bottom to present a larger surface to the fuel, and is drawn out into a neck about 2 inches high and 9 in diameter. To this neck is fitted the capital, which receives the spirituous vapour. It has the form of a flattened cone with the apex downward, and is about 17 inches wide at the base. It is truncated at the place where it joins the alembic, and where it has also a pro jecting tube of 4 inch in diameter, which conveys the vapour into the worm. This is a convoluted pipe im mersed in a large tub of water to condense the vapour, and makes six or seven turns before it reaches the bot tom. The diameter of this pipe gradually lessens from where it joins the capital to its mouth, where the li quor runs out, which is about one inch wide.
The liquor, from the time it begins to run off, gra dually decreases in strength till the wine is entirely ex hausted of spirit, and then it becomes almost tasteless, and is little better than water. From this inequality, a distinction is always made between the good spirit and the petite eau, as the French call it, or what is termed feints by the British distillers, which last is kept in separate casks, and redistilled in the next pro cess. The precise time, however, of collecting the feints, is altogether arbitrary. In some places it is determined by the specific gravity of the spirit already run off. In Spain and Portugal, the sinking of olive oil in the liquor is the established proof ; and others deter mine it by the proportion of brandy obtained to the quan tity of wine put into the alembic. But this last proof, though frequently used, must be far from being cor rect, as the quantity of good spirit depends entirely upon the quality of the wines, and the produce varies from a third to a fifteenth of their weight. Strong hea
vy wines give the most spirit, and light thin wines, though well fermented, yield the least ; and if the quan tity of brandy be less than a sixth, it is supposed not to be worth the expense of distillation. In the extensive brandy distilleries of Catalonia in Spain, the wines gen erally used yield about a fifth part of olive-oil proof, and as much of feints for redistillation, and the general ave rage of product from the wines of the south of France is about a fourth.
The burnt taste which is common to most exported brandies, and considered by many as an excellence, is much disliked by the most delicate judges in the wine countries, and is supposed to be produced by boiling the wine with too much vehemence, or, according to Chaptal, by the decomposition of the ?Italic acid contain ed in almost all wines, and which partly rises with the distilled spirit.
Brandies, distilled from the richest and fullest bodied wines, have in general a very unpleasant flavour, which is supposed to arise from an essential oil found most a bundantly in such wines; and the most effectual method of destroying it is by adding a quantity of water, which separates the oil from the spirit, and a cautious redis tillation.
Brandy of an inferior kind is also made from the marc, or refuse of the grapes after the wine has been ex tracted. This refuse still retains enough of grape juice to he brought into a state of fermentation, and it is es timated, that 32 cubic feet of it will yield about ten gal lons of spirit. Considerable difficulties however, have been experienced in the distillation from mare ; and great precautions are necessary in the regulation of the heat, to prevent the mare from adhering to the bottom of the alembic, which not only hurts the flavour of the spirit, but greatly injures the alembic itself. As a re medy for these difficulties, M. Beaume, in his experi ments on distillation, recommends the immersion of the alembic in a water bath, which prevents every possibili ty of the marc being scorched ; or, which is more con venient, the interposition of a wicker cradle between the mare and the alembic, about two inches Irom the bottom.