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He explained that his misfortune in laming the horse and the fog combined had separated him from the revenue posse just from a secluded cove, where his men had discovered and raided an illicit distillery in a cavern, cutting the copper still and worm to bits, demolishing the furnace and fermenters, the flake-stand and thumper, destroying considerable store of mash and beer and singlings, and seizing and making off with a barrel of the completed product.
Fixed about the cave, upon rude stone stillions, were the usual vessels requisite for the various processes through which it was necessary to put the malt, before the wort, which is its first liquid shape, was fermented, cleared off, and thrown into the Still to be singled; for our readers must know that distillation is a double process, the first product being called singlings, and the second or last, doublings which is the perfect liquor.
In this stronghold, one night, Con Hite sat gloomy and depressed beside the little copper still for the sake of which he risked so much. It held all it could of singlings, and it seemed to him a cheery sight in the shadowy recesses of the rock house. He regarded it with mingled pride and affection, often declaring it "the smartest still of its capacity in the world."
He hesitated a moment, then turned off the road around the crescent for the path through the glade. A thought to dissuade Tump from drinking the fiery "singlings" of the moonshiners crossed Peters mind, but he put it aside. Tump was a habitué of the glade. All the physiological arguments upon which Peter could base an argument were far beyond the ex-soldier's comprehension.
We drank the singlings while they were hot, but like the old woman who could not eat corn bread until she heard that they made whisky out of corn, then she could manage to "worry a little of it down;" so it was with us and the singlings. From this time forward, we were ever on the march tramp, tramp, tramp always on the march.
Now and then a glitter from the fragments of the copper still and the sections of the coils of the worm marked the course their ravages had taken, and all the chill, cavernous air was filled with the sickly odor of singlings and the fermenting mash adhering to the broken staves of the great riven tanks, called the beer-tubs.
What right had he ter bust our still an' break up our wu'm and pour our mash an' singlings out on the ground? Ain't it our'n? Ain't the corn an' apples an' peaches our'n? Didn't we grow 'em? an' what right hev the gover'ment ter say we kin eat 'em, but can't bile 'em eh? They b'long ter we-uns an' gosh! the gover'ment can't hender! But we never meant no harm ter Briscoe. Lawd!
It is possible to make an inferior whiskey at one distillation, by running the singlings through a steam-chest, commonly known as a "thumpin'-chist." The advantage claimed is that "Hit allows you to make your whiskey afore the revenue gits it; that's all." The final process is to run the liquor through a rude charcoal filter, to rid it of most of its fusel oil.
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