Foreword: Making good whiskey is both an art and a science. Subtle changes in the chemistry of the distilling process can mean the difference between a good bourbon and rotgut. Few of the men and women involved in making whiskey before 1920 had any scientific training but through experience and onsite experimentation often achieved good results. A handful of whiskey men approached the process from a more scientific perspective. Three of them are briefly profiled here, none of whom in the final analysis, succeeded.
David D. Cattanach of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, was a true “polymath,” that is, someone whose expertise spans a significant number of different fields, allowing the individual to solve problems that others can’t. Born in Scotland in 1835, he emigrated to the United States about 1855, already having invented and sold an improved method for making gunpowder. He first made his name on these shores as a stained glass artist and decorator of churches.
Cattanach never stopped inventing. Among his innovations was an improved furnace that reputedly would give the same amount of heat with one-third of the coal required by ordinary furnaces. It also consumed its own smoke, something environmentalists today would applaud. He also invented processes for refining and treating oils and in May, 1776, with other investors spearheaded a new company in Rhode Island called the “Chattan Oil and Paint Works” for the manufacture of paints and varnishes.
Then Cattanach turned his attention to making a whiskey that, he claimed, would be unlike other spirits that were “injurious…because of acids and alkalines.” The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 1885 awarded him two patents. One was for an “apparatus for the manufacture and distillation of alcohol, hydrocarbons, and acetic acid, and for aging and refining liquors.” The illustration he submitted with the application is shown here. A second patent was for the process involved in employing the distilling apparatus. 
Perhaps unable to sell his system to established distillers, Cattanach determined to employ it himself. In 1895, with other investors, he formed the Beverly Hill Road Distilling Co., capitalizing it at $100,000 and naming its principal product “Heather Blossom.” The inventor advertised the product heavily to physicians: One such ad read: “The B.H.R. Distilling Co. calls attention to their Heather Blossom pure malt Whiskeys, Brandies, Wines, etc., which through its new system of distillation by phyisco-chemical means, are rendered chemically pure, and are of reliable and uniform quality and adapted to the requirements of the Medical Faculty in its demand for a pure and nutritive stimulant.”
Despite Cattanach’s efforts things did not go well for the Beverage Hill Road enterprise. Perhaps the distilling process gave an off-taste to his whiskey. Whatever the reason, only three years after it opened the company summarily shut down. Heather Blossom Whiskey disappeared forever.
“The Cushing Medical Supply Company,” and its proprietor, Dr. Ira Barrows Cushing, in their very names carry a certain expectation of authenticity and worthiness. That is, until one discovers that the “medicine” mainly supplied by Cushing was whiskey that he mixed up in his Boston headquarters, presumably using the “Cushing Process for Purifying Alcoholic Liquors,” that he invented and patented in 1892. 
Shown here is the Rube Goldberg-like contraption that Cushing assembled for a “process of and apparatus for purifying and maturing liquors or distilled spirits.” His patent application explanation of how it worked ran to more than three highly technical and abstruse pages. An example of his description: “My present invention consists in commingling a suitable quantity of oxygen gas with the atmospheric air employed for treating the liquor, whereby the air which is disseminated through the liquor is energized or rendered more active for the purpose of rapidly oxidizing the fusel-oils into their avoring-acids and the process of maturing the liquor thus accelerated and rendered more perfect than heretofore.” Whatever the examiner understood of “energized…atmospheric air,” “avoring acids,” and the rest, on November 1, 1892, the United States Patent Office issued Cushing Patent No. 485,984. 
A homeopathic doctor, Cushing had practiced in several Massachusetts towns before opening his “medical supply house” in Boston. Along with other patent medicine nostrums he offered a variety of whiskey brands, many of them with “Cushing” in the title, e.g. “The Cushing Process Old Rye Whiskey.” He continued to emphasize the importance of his “discovery” of the Cushing Process, telling a biographer: “It utilizes nature’s own means, and consists of forcing heated atmospheric air — which is first purified according to Professor Tyndall’s method of destroying germs of animalcule — through the liquors, thoroughly oxidizing the fusel oils and eliminating the poisons.”
Throughout his years selling alcoholic liquids from Boston, Cushing continued working as a homeopathic doctor. He is recorded as being the “examining surgeon” for several Boston area charitable organizations and a member of both the Boston Medical Society and the Gynecological Society. At the age of 61 Dr. Cushing was diagnosed with an advanced case of colon cancer. An operation ensued but sepsis occurred and in August, 1908 he died. The Cushing Medical Supply Company appears to have survived for three more years under different management but went bankrupt and along with the doctor’s whiskeys disappeared about 1912.
It may seem like a stretch to call a Japanese pioneer of biotechnology, credited with the first isolation of adrenalin, a “whiskey man.” Nonetheless, for several pivotal years in his life, Jokichi Takamine, a true scientist, was financed for his research into a less expensive method of whiskey production by the Peoria, Illinois-based “Whiskey Trust.”
Born in Japan in 1854, Takamine came to the U.S. in 1884, married an American woman, and in rapid success had two sons. He sought employment in America and decided to pursue his interest in distilling. The key was adapting the methods of brewing Japanese sake (rice wine) to making whiskey. In Peoria, Takamine sparked interest in one of the most important liquor executives in the Nation. He was Joseph Greenhut, the head of the Distilling and Cattle Feeding Company, a monopoly controlling dozens of distilleries in the Midwest and known popularly as “The Whiskey Trust.”
After meeting Jokichi in person Greenhut was sufficiently impressed to give the Japanese scientist a contract to allow him to set up a research laboratory. This facility, given heavy security by the Trust, was located inside the malt house of the Woolner Grove Distillery, along the river on the south side of Peoria. Takamine called his lab “The White House.” In 1891 word got out what Takamine was up to: His use of rice rather than malt in the distilling process would be simpler and faster, resulting in a lower cost for whiskey — Trust whiskey.
Hampered by arson at his original distillery, thought to have been set by malt workers, Takamine finally was able to put his distilling methods to the test. He manufactured a lower cost whiskey which Jokichi called “Bonzai,” a greeting given to the Emperor of Japan meaning, “May you live ten thousand years!” Under pressure from dissident distillers and experiencing financial problems, in 1894 the Whiskey Trust ousted Greenhut and broke off its relationship with Takamine. It took Bonzai whiskey off the market and reverted entirely to creating its whiskey from malt.
Disappointed and broke, the Japanese scientist turned to the pharmaceutical business, inventing a remedy for indigestion that made him a multi-millionaire. He continued to be active as a scientist, including credited as the first person to isolate adrenalin. He also started new biotechnical enterprises in Japan and the United States. Takamine is remembered in the Nation’s Capitol for donating 3,020 Japanese cherry trees in 1912 to decorate the Tidal Basin. Their blooming annually brings thousands to Washington.
Note: More complete biographies of each of these men may be found elsewhere on this post: David Cattanach, November 14, 2013; Dr. Ira Barrows Cushing, October 9, 2017, and Jokichi Takamine, August 5, 2018.
No comments:
Post a Comment