Anderson quickly began distilling at the cooperage. Crushed grain and malt were poured into tubs of hot water, where the grain's starch was converted to sugar. Yeast was added to the cooled mash to start the process of fermentation. After a few days, the fermented mash was then placed into the bowls of two stills, and the bowls were heated. Since alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, it evaporates first, rising into a tube, or worm, where it cools, condenses and runs into a receptacle. By February 22, barely a month after receiving permission to set up shop, Anderson had barreled and stored 80 gallons of whiskey.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in American History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Four months later, in June, Anderson proposed a major expansion of the distillery. To make it a truly commercial enterprise, he wanted to purchase, for an estimated cost of $640, three new stills, several mash tubs and a new boiler. In addition, he proposed the building of a new structure to house the stills and a smaller malting house, professing ignorance of how to estimate the cost of their construction.

Before making the decision about a large expansion of this still-unfamiliar business, Washington asked the advice of his rum distiller friend, John Fitzgerald, in nearby Alexandria, Va. Fitzgerald wrote back almost immediately: 'As I have no doubt but Mr. Anderson understands the Distillation of Spirit from Grain I cannot hesitate in my Opinion that it might be carried on to great advantage on your Estate.' He continued by asserting that, if the quality was good, the proposed operation could sell 10 times as much as it could produce. Reassured, Washington wrote to Anderson that the distillation of spirits 'is a business I am entirely unacquainted with, but from your knowledge of it and from the confidence you have in the profit to be derived from the establishment, I am disposed to enter upon one….'

During the last half of 1797, a new stone building was erected and the new equipment, including three copper stills manufactured in Alexandria, was purchased and installed. The distillery was in full swing by January of the following year. The tools and nature of the operation are fairly well understood from surviving documents. On the site there were as many as 50 mash tubs, and a kiln for malting and slop coolers to prepare the used mash as food for swine. The centerpiece, though, was the massive, one-story, 30-foot-by-75-foot stone structure that housed the heart of the distillery. Built of sandstone blocks quarried from Mount Vernon properties upon a foundation of river stone transported from Great Falls, it enclosed 2,250 square feet.

The five stills held a total of 616 gallons of mash. Each had its own worm and a receptacle. Specially designed wooden troughs transported water into the building to help cool the vapors in the worms. Brick furnaces and a stove provided heat for the stills and boiler. There was also a large storage cellar in which to lock up the barreled whiskey, perhaps to protect it from the undesirable elements Washington had first feared might be attracted to the operation.

What the documents do not provide, however, is a full understanding of how the equipment was arranged within the building. There remain no descriptions or drawings showing the relative placement of heat sources, stills, water troughs and other necessary components.

James Anderson's son, John, was put in charge of the expanded distillery, and six slaves — Hanson, Peter, Nat, Daniel, James and Timothy — were assigned to the operation. The endeavor was an immediate success. By the end of 1798, the new five-still setup quickly set a pace that would yield roughly eight times the production of the two-still operation during 1797. The immense increase in production, however, quickly resulted in unforeseen problems for its owner. With all five stills running full time, the operation was quickly going through the corn available on the plantation. Some years before, Washington had begun limiting the amount of corn grown at Mount Vernon, preferring to cultivate more lucrative grains such as wheat. That earlier decision now came back to haunt him. Having assumed that he could operate with the corn grown on his own lands, he now found himself purchasing extra corn for the distillery, a cash outlay he had not anticipated.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to