Editor’s Note: This is the third in a nine part series chronicling the life of James Crow, an extremely important figure in the history of American whiskey. A chemist originally from Scotland, he is credited by some as having invented the sour mash process. Watch this time slot on Thursdays (11am Pacific Time) for the other articles.
The America James Crow found on arrival was an unregulated liquor industry with no excise duty and no laws governing the manufacture of whiskey. He observed distilleries employed a range of different grain mashes, embraced new patent steam stills with unique fabrications and materials, and modified their biological processes to accommodate the climatic conditions and local microbiota. In Philadelphia, he found the maritime coastal States used mainly rye with a corn base; when he moved to Kentucky, the western States were predominantly corn mash.
Crow arrived when whiskey had become America’s most popular alcohol beverage, with cider trailing behind in volume consumption. Over the coming decades, whiskey’s share of liquor consumption continued to rise steeply directly propelling Crow’s career so by the time of his death in 1856, America produced two-thirds of the world’s whiskey.
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READ THE STORYA year after his Edinburgh studies, James Crow disembarked in Philadelphia in 1823, although there is no record of his arrival, place of residence or employment. Whether a member of the Crow family drew him, his wife and eleven-year-old daughter to immigrate to America, or his rumored financial distress forced him to seek a new life; his motivation to leave Scotland remains a mystery.
For a man educated in brewing and distilling, Philadelphia was the ideal city to find employment. The town had a dozen distilleries making rum and whiskey, with four distilleries processing 800,000 bushels of corn and rye a year, representing two million gallons of whiskey. When Crow arrived, Philadelphia was America’s second-largest city, the most industrialized and modern metropolis in North America. Famed for its educational institutions and publishing, medicine and science, foundries and factories, coppersmiths and cooperages, it was a natural magnet for Crow’s ambitions and training. The city attracted luminaries such as Benjamin Franklin (including his tract in 1765 Poor Richard’s Almanac, ‘How to manage distilling a spirit from rye, and other grains’), it was a hotbed of distilling inventions and innovation for America’s fledgling manufacturing industries.
In 1778, Irishman Christopher Colles installed America’s first Newcomen-style steam engine at a Philadelphia distillery to pump water. Pumps for mashing, cleaning and moving charges between vessels saved a third on labor costs. While it proved unsuccessful, it was the first steam engine put into use at a distillery.
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America’s whiskey distilling roots went back to Jamestown Virginia and Joseph Finch in 1621; however, whiskey distilling lagged behind rum until the 19th century. West Indies sugar plantations produced large surpluses of cheap molasses used by New England distilleries. Colonial orchards yielded an abundance of fruit for brandy distilling—applejack in the north, peaches in the south, plus small volumes of pear, grape and maple spirit across the Colonies. Spreading western farmlands began to produce large quantities of cheap grain to fuel the insatiable consumer demand for whiskey as America’s population increased fivefold from 1800 to 1850.
In 1823, Pennsylvania was the premier state for distilling. A national survey on industry statistics in 1810, Tench Coxe revealed Pennsylvania was the largest distilling state with around 3,594 distilleries producing 6,552,284 proof gallons of rum, fruit brandy and whiskey. In 1824, Lafayette wrote of Pennsylvania ‘a great deal of liquor distilled from peaches, corn, rye, maple sugar. Etc.’
Kentucky in comparison produced 2,552,773 gallons at 2,000 distilleries. America led world production and consumption of spirits with a population of 10.5 million, distilling 37.5 million gallons and with imports American consumed 45.5 million in spirits. Britain and Ireland, with 21 million people, produced 9.2 million gallons of spirits and consumed 13.2 million gallons.
The thirst for knowledge on the production of spirits meant thousands of homestead distillers sought advice on distillation to convert excess produce into a tradable commodity, and serve as household medicine and a recreational beverage at social occasions. For others, it was a psychoactive escape from the rigors on the harsh pioneer life. There was a pragmatic incentive to convert four bushels of grain (244 pounds on a packhorse) into a barrel of whiskey, preserving a more easily portable commodity that generated a higher return in trade.
The four most influential American books on distillation and alcoholic cordial recipes were all published in Pennsylvania: American Distiller by Michael Krafft in 1803, Practical Distiller, Samuel McHarry 1809, The Distiller by Anderson Hall in 1818, and The Art of Making Whiskey by Antony Boucheire in 1818, initially in French, later published in English in Kentucky. These practical manuals liberally referenced earlier distilling books, chemistry journals, academic papers and Government reports.
Some of the advice recycled antiquated or inaccurate information from Sir Robert Murray’s 1661 The Way Malt is made in Scotland (1661, Royal Society), Ambrose Cooper Complete Distiller (1757 London, a transcript of Steven van Esveldt’s Nieuw Ontdekte Distilleer, 1750, Amsterdam), and Dr David Cox treatise on rectification from the 1730s. Contemporary sources included William Henry’s Epitome of Chemistry (New York, 1808) and William Nicholson British Encyclopaedia (distilling section, 1809). Farmers and millers with no practical knowledge of distilling found these manuals essential guides to learn how to seasonally exploit their surplus production, circumvent grain wastage, add value to their businesses, or fortify their households with liquid medication and social lubricants.
Crow in Woodford County
In part 4 next week we take a look at the state of American distilling during Crow’s time.
