Page 101 - My FlipBook

Waste Products. ;

Now, if we have analyzed that sand in which the planting
is done so as to understand its chemical constituents before,
and then will analyze it again after a considerable bulk of
seeds have germinated within the sand, we will find that it
has gained something as well as lost. It has lost very little
it has gained more than it has lost. And what it has gained is
found to be acetic acid ; vinegar has been formed and is found
in the sand that has been thrown ofif as the waste product
from those sprouting grains of corn. Many of the plants
form acid waste products, particularly in the young growth.
Some that do not form acid waste products in the growth
later in life do so in the germination of their seed.
I may allude, in passing, to the brewer's habit of handling
corn, those who make good corn whisky. Their first process
is to moisten the corn and lay it under conditions for germi-
nation and wait until a certain period of germination has been
carried on, until the sprout has just appeared in the corn.
Then they destroy the life and place it under conditions for
fermentation ; or, in other words, they take the grain when
the greatest amount of, sugar has just been formed, and it is
for this particular reason that they germinate the grain be-
fore they place it under the conditions for fermentation. And
nowadays the brewer who does not follow his yeast carefully
with the microscope and guard it carefully from micro-organ-
isms and other germs of that character, is not doing his duty
by his customers, for he proposes to furnish them with a pure
alcohol, not one that is mixed up with the waste products of
various organisms, but the product of the yeast plant, pure
and simple. So you will find our brewers are the great culti-
vators of micro-organisms, if we should term the yeast plant
a micro-organism, which we do not quite want to do. But
they have to look carefully for the micro-organisms mixed
with their veast, in order to have their fermentations pure.

89