1.
Whisky
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Whisky or whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Various grains are used for different varieties, including barley, corn, rye, Whisky is typically aged in wooden casks, generally made of charred white oak. Whisky is a strictly regulated spirit worldwide with many classes and types, the typical unifying characteristics of the different classes and types are the fermentation of grains, distillation, and aging in wooden barrels. The word whiskey is an anglicisation of the Classical Gaelic word uisce meaning water, distilled alcohol was known in Latin as aqua vitae. This was translated to Classical Gaelic as uisce beatha, which became uisce beatha in Irish, early forms of the word in English included uskebeaghe, usquebaugh, usquebath, and usquebae. Much is made of the two spellings, whiskey and whisky. There are two schools of thought on the issue, there is general agreement that when quoting the proper name printed on a label, the spelling on the label should not be altered. Some writers refer to whisky or whisky/whiskey to acknowledge the variation, the spelling whiskey is common in Ireland and the United States, while whisky is used in all other whisky producing countries. In the US, the usage has not always been consistent, from the late eighteenth century to the mid twentieth century, American writers used both spellings interchangeably until the introduction of newspaper style guides. Since the 1960s, American writers have increasingly used whiskey as the spelling for aged grain spirits made in the US. Scotch is the internationally recognized term for Scotch whisky, the earliest certain chemical distillations were by Greeks in Alexandria in the 1st century AD, but these were not distillations of alcohol. The medieval Arabs adopted the technique of the Alexandrian Greeks, and written records in Arabic begin in the 9th century. Distilling technology passed from the medieval Arabs to the medieval Latins, the earliest records of the distillation of alcohol are in Italy in the 13th century, where alcohol was distilled from wine. An early description of the technique was given by Ramon Llull and its use spread through medieval monasteries, largely for medicinal purposes, such as the treatment of colic and smallpox. The art of distillation spread to Ireland and Scotland no later than the 15th century, the practice of medicinal distillation eventually passed from a monastic setting to the secular via professional medical practitioners of the time, The Guild of Barber Surgeons. The earliest Irish mention of whisky comes from the seventeenth-century Annals of Clonmacnoise, between 1536 and 1541, King Henry VIII of England dissolved the monasteries, sending their monks out into the general public. Whisky production moved out of a setting and into personal homes. The distillation process was still in its infancy, whisky itself was not allowed to age, renaissance-era whisky was also very potent and not diluted
2.
Rye
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Rye is a grass grown extensively as a grain, a cover crop and a forage crop. It is a member of the tribe and is closely related to barley. Rye grain is used for flour, rye bread, rye beer, crisp bread, some whiskeys, some vodkas and it can also be eaten whole, either as boiled rye berries or by being rolled, similar to rolled oats. Rye is a grain and should not be confused with ryegrass, which is used for lawns, pasture. Rye is one of a number of species grow wild in central and eastern Turkey. It is possible that rye traveled west from Turkey as an admixture in wheat. Since the Middle Ages people have cultivated rye widely in Central and it serves as the main bread cereal in most areas east of the French-German border and north of Hungary. In Southern Europe, it was cultivated on marginal lands, claims of much earlier cultivation of rye, at the Epipalaeolithic site of Tell Abu Hureyra in the Euphrates valley of northern Syria remain controversial. Critics point to inconsistencies in the dates, and identifications based solely on grain. Winter rye is any breed of rye planted in the fall to provide cover for the winter. It grows during warmer days of the winter when sunlight temporarily warms the plant above freezing and it is sometimes used in winter gardens and is a common nurse crop. Rye is grown primarily in Eastern, Central and Northern Europe, the main rye belt stretches from northern Germany through Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia into central and northern Russia. Rye is also grown in North America, in South America, in Oceania, in Turkey, in Kazakhstan, production levels of rye have fallen in most of the producing nations, as of 2012. For instance, production of rye in Russia fell from 13.9 million metric tons in 1992 to 2.1 t in 2012, most rye is consumed locally or exported only to neighboring countries, rather than being shipped worldwide. Rye is highly susceptible to the ergot fungus, consumption of ergot-infected rye by humans and animals results in a serious medical condition known as ergotism. Ergotism can cause physical and mental harm, including convulsions, miscarriage, necrosis of digits, hallucinations. Historically, damp northern countries that have depended on rye as a staple crop were subject to epidemics of this condition. There have been occurrence of ergotism with periods where there were incidents of people persecuted for being witches
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Maize
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Maize, also known as corn, is a large grain plant first domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The six major types of corn are dent corn, flint corn, pod corn, popcorn, flour corn, the leafy stalk of the plant produces separate pollen and ovuliferous inflorescences or ears, which are fruits, yielding kernels or seeds. Maize kernels are used in cooking as a starch. Most historians believe maize was domesticated in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico, recent research modified this view somewhat, scholars now indicate the adjacent Balsas River Valley of south-central Mexico as the center of domestication. The Olmec and Mayans cultivated maize in numerous varieties throughout Mesoamerica, cooked and its believed that beginning about 2500 BC, the crop spread through much of the Americas. The region developed a network based on surplus and varieties of maize crops. Nevertheless, recent data indicates that the spread of maize took place even earlier, according to Piperno, A large corpus of data indicates that it was dispersed into lower Central America by 7600 BP and had moved into the inter-Andean valleys of Colombia between 7000 and 6000 BP. Since then, even earlier dates have been published, the study also demonstrated that the oldest surviving maize types are those of the Mexican highlands. Later, maize spread from this region over the Americas along two major paths and this is consistent with a model based on the archaeological record suggesting that maize diversified in the highlands of Mexico before spreading to the lowlands. Before they were domesticated, maize plants only grew small,25 millimetres long corn cobs, Maize is the most widely grown grain crop throughout the Americas, with 361 million metric tons grown in the United States in 2014. Approximately 40% of the crop—130 million tons—is used for corn ethanol, genetically modified maize made up 85% of the maize planted in the United States in 2009. After the arrival of Europeans in 1492, Spanish settlers consumed maize and explorers and traders carried it back to Europe, Spanish settlers far preferred wheat bread to maize, cassava, or potatoes. Maize flour could not be substituted for wheat for bread, since in Christian belief only wheat could undergo transubstantiation. At another level, Spaniards worried that by eating indigenous foods, which they did not consider nutritious, that not only would they weaken, despite these worries, Spaniards did consume maize and archeological evidence from Florida sites indicate they cultivated it as well. Maize spread to the rest of the world because of its ability to grow in diverse climates and it was cultivated in Spain just a few decades after Columbuss voyages and then spread to Italy, West Africa and elsewhere. The word maize derives from the Spanish form of the indigenous Taíno word for the plant and it is known by other names around the world. The word corn outside North America, Australia, and New Zealand refers to any cereal crop, in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, corn primarily means maize, this usage started as a shortening of Indian corn. Indian corn primarily means maize, but can more specifically to multicolored flint corn used for decoration
5.
Barley
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Barley, a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago, Barley has been used as animal fodder, as a source of fermentable material for beer and certain distilled beverages, and as a component of various health foods. It is used in soups and stews, and in barley bread of various cultures, Barley grains are commonly made into malt in a traditional and ancient method of preparation. In 2014, barley was ranked fourth among grains in quantity produced behind corn, rice, the Old English word for barley was bære, which traces back to Proto-Indo-European and is cognate to the Latin word farina flour. The direct ancestor of modern English barley in Old English was the derived adjective bærlic, the first citation of the form bærlic in the Oxford English Dictionary dates to around 966 CE, in the compound word bærlic-croft. The underived word bære survives in the north of Scotland as bere, the word barn, which originally meant barley-house, is also rooted in these words. Barley is a member of the grass family and it is a self-pollinating, diploid species with 14 chromosomes. The wild ancestor of domesticated barley, Hordeum vulgare subsp, spontaneum, is abundant in grasslands and woodlands throughout the Fertile Crescent area of Western Asia and northeast Africa, and is abundant in disturbed habitats, roadsides and orchards. Outside this region, the barley is less common and is usually found in disturbed habitats. However, in a study of genome-wide diversity markers, Tibet was found to be a center of domestication of cultivated barley. Wild barley has a spike, upon maturity, the spikelets separate. Domesticated barley has nonshattering spikes, making it easier to harvest the mature ears. The nonshattering condition is caused by a mutation in one of two linked genes known as Bt1 and Bt2, many cultivars possess both mutations. The nonshattering condition is recessive, so varieties of barley that exhibit this condition are homozygous for the mutant allele, spikelets are arranged in triplets which alternate along the rachis. In wild barley, only the central spikelet is fertile, while the two are reduced. This condition is retained in certain cultivars known as two-row barleys, a pair of mutations result in fertile lateral spikelets to produce six-row barleys. Recent genetic studies have revealed that a mutation in one gene, two-row barley has a lower protein content than six-row barley, thus a more fermentable sugar content. High-protein barley is best suited for animal feed, Malting barley is usually lower protein which shows more uniform germination, needs shorter steeping, and has less protein in the extract that can make beer cloudy
6.
Distillation
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Distillation is a process of separating the component or substances from a liquid mixture by selective evaporation and condensation. Distillation may result in complete separation, or it may be a partial separation that increases the concentration of selected components of the mixture. In either case the process exploits differences in the volatility of the mixtures components, in industrial chemistry, distillation is a unit operation of practically universal importance, but it is a physical separation process and not a chemical reaction. For example, In the fossil fuel industry distillation is a class of operation in obtaining materials from crude oil for fuels. Distillation permits separation of air into its components — notably oxygen, nitrogen, Distillation of fermented products produces distilled beverages with a high alcohol content, or separates out other fermentation products of commercial value. An installation for distillation, especially of alcohol, is a distillery, the distillation equipment is a still. Distillation is an old method of artificial desalination. Aristotle wrote about the process in his Meteorologica and even that ordinary wine possesses a kind of exhalation, later evidence of distillation comes from Greek alchemists working in Alexandria in the 1st century AD. Distilled water has been known since at least c,200, when Alexander of Aphrodisias described the process. Work on distilling other liquids continued in early Byzantine Egypt under the Greek-Egyptian Zosimus of Panopolis, Distillation in China could have begun during the Eastern Han Dynasty, but archaeological evidence indicates that actual distillation of beverages began in the Jin and Southern Song dynasties. A still was found in a site in Qinglong, Hebei province dating to the 12th century. Distilled beverages were more common during the Yuan dynasty, arabs learned the process from the Alexandrians and used it extensively in their chemical experiments. Clear evidence of the distillation of alcohol comes from the School of Salerno in the 12th century, fractional distillation was developed by Tadeo Alderotti in the 13th century. In 1500, German alchemist Hieronymus Braunschweig published Liber de arte destillandi the first book dedicated to the subject of distillation. In 1651, John French published The Art of Distillation the first major English compendium of practice and this includes diagrams with people in them showing the industrial rather than bench scale of the operation. As alchemy evolved into the science of chemistry, vessels called retorts became used for distillations, riveted joints were often kept tight by using various mixtures, for instance a dough made of rye flour. These alembics often featured a system around the beak, using cold water for instance. Today, the retorts and pot stills have largely supplanted by more efficient distillation methods in most industrial processes
7.
Barrel
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A barrel, cask, or tun is a hollow cylindrical container, traditionally made of wooden staves bound by wooden or metal hoops. Traditionally, the barrel was a size of measure referring to a set capacity or weight of a given commodity. For example, in the UK a barrel of beer refers to a quantity of 36 imperial gallons, wine was shipped in barrels of 119 litres. Modern barrels and casks can also be made of aluminum, stainless steel, someone who makes barrels is called a barrel maker or cooper. Barrels are only one type of cooperage, other types include, but are not limited to, buckets, tubs, butter churns, hogsheads, firkins, kegs, kilderkins, tierces, rundlets, puncheons, pipes, tuns, butts, pins, and breakers. An aging barrel is used to age wine, distilled spirits such as whiskey, brandy, or rum, beer, tabasco sauce, when a wine or spirit ages in a barrel, small amounts of oxygen are introduced as the barrel lets some air in. Oxygen enters a barrel when water or alcohol is lost due to evaporation, in an environment with 100% relative humidity, very little water evaporates and so most of the loss is alcohol, a useful trick if one has a wine with very high proof. Most beverages are topped up from other barrels to prevent significant oxidation, although others such as vin jaune, beverages aged in wooden barrels take on some of the compounds in the barrel, such as vanillin and wood tannins. The presence of these depends on many factors, including the place of origin, how the staves were cut and dried. After roughly three years, most of a barrels flavor compounds have been leached out and it is well on its way to becoming neutral, barrels used for aging are typically made of French or American oak, but chestnut and redwood are also used. Some Asian beverages use Japanese cedar, which imparts an unusual, in Peru and Chile, a grape distillate named pisco is either aged in oak or in earthenware. Some wines are fermented on barrel, as opposed to in a container like steel or wine-grade HDPE tanks. Wine can also be fermented in large tanks, which—when open to the atmosphere—are called open-tops. Other wooden cooperage for storing wine or spirits range from smaller barriques to huge casks, the tastes yielded by French and American species of oak are slightly different, with French oak being subtler, while American oak gives stronger aromas. To retain the desired measure of oak influence, a winery will replace a certain percentage of its barrels every year, some winemakers use 200% new oak, where the wine is put into new oak barrels twice during the aging process. Bulk wines are more cheaply flavored by soaking oak chips in them instead of being aged in a barrel. Sherry is stored in 600-litre casks made of North American oak, the casks, or butts, are filled five-sixths full, leaving the space of two fists empty at the top to allow flor to develop on top of the wine. NOTE, This section uses both the U. S. –Irish typical spelling whiskey and the British–Canadian typical spelling whisky, laws in several jurisdictions require that whiskey be aged in wooden barrels
8.
Oak
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An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 600 extant species of oaks, the common name oak also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus, as well as in those of unrelated species such as Grevillea robusta and the Casuarinaceae. North America contains the largest number of oak species, with approximately 90 occurring in the United States, the second greatest center of oak diversity is China, which contains approximately 100 species. Oaks have spirally arranged leaves, with lobate margins in many species, also, the acorns contain tannic acid, as do the leaves, which helps to guard from fungi and insects. Many deciduous species are marcescent, not dropping dead leaves until spring, in spring, a single oak tree produces both male flowers and small female flowers. The fruit is a nut called an acorn, borne in a structure known as a cupule, each acorn contains one seed and takes 6–18 months to mature. The live oaks are distinguished for being evergreen, but are not actually a distinct group, the oak tree is a flowering plant. Oaks may be divided into two genera and a number of sections, The genus Quercus is divided into the following sections, Quercus, the white oaks of Europe, Asia and North America. Styles are short, acorns mature in 6 months and taste sweet or slightly bitter, the leaves mostly lack a bristle on their lobe tips, which are usually rounded. The type species is Quercus robur, Mesobalanus, Hungarian oak and its relatives of Europe and Asia. Styles long, acorns mature in about 6 months and taste bitter, the section Mesobalanus is closely related to section Quercus and sometimes included in it. Cerris, the Turkey oak and its relatives of Europe and Asia, styles long, acorn mature in 18 months and taste very bitter. The inside of the shell is hairless. Its leaves typically have sharp tips, with bristles at the lobe tip. Protobalanus, the live oak and its relatives, in southwest United States. Styles short, acorns mature in 18 months and taste very bitter, the inside of the acorn shell appears woolly. Leaves typically have sharp tips, with bristles at the lobe tip. Lobatae, the red oaks of North America, Central America, styles long, acorns mature in 18 months and taste very bitter
9.
Pennsylvania
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Pennsylvania /ˌpɛnsᵻlˈveɪnjə/, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle, Pennsylvania is the 33rd largest, the 5th most populous, and the 9th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The states five most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, the state capital, and its ninth-largest city, is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of shoreline along Lake Erie and the Delaware Estuary. The state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States, it came into being in 1681 as a result of a land grant to William Penn. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden and it was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12,1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the states largest city of Philadelphia, during the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washingtons headquarters during the winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west, of a total 46,055 square miles,44,817 square miles are land,490 square miles are inland waters, and 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie. It is the 33rd largest state in the United States, Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Cities include Philadelphia, Reading, Lebanon and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, the northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining communities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston City, and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest, the state has 5 regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau, Ridge and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and the Erie Plain. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the corner, has a humid continental climate. The largest city, Philadelphia, has characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware. Moving toward the interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increase. Western areas of the state, particularly locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, the Tuscarora Nation took up temporary residence in the central portion of Pennsylvania ca. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their lands in America
10.
Maryland
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The states largest city is Baltimore, and its capital is Annapolis. Among its occasional nicknames are Old Line State, the Free State, the state is named after Henrietta Maria of France, the wife of Charles I of England. George Calvert was the first Lord of Baltimore and the first English proprietor of the colonial grant. Maryland was the state to ratify the United States Constitution. Maryland is one of the smallest U. S. states in terms of area, as well as one of the most densely populated, Maryland has an area of 12,406.68 square miles and is comparable in overall area with Belgium. It is the 42nd largest and 9th smallest state and is closest in size to the state of Hawaii, the next largest state, its neighbor West Virginia, is almost twice the size of Maryland. Maryland possesses a variety of topography within its borders, contributing to its nickname America in Miniature. The mid-portion of this border is interrupted by Washington, D. C. which sits on land that was part of Montgomery and Prince Georges counties and including the town of Georgetown. This land was ceded to the United States Federal Government in 1790 to form the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay nearly bisects the state and the counties east of the bay are known collectively as the Eastern Shore. Close to the town of Hancock, in western Maryland, about two-thirds of the way across the state. This geographical curiosity makes Maryland the narrowest state, bordered by the Mason–Dixon line to the north, portions of Maryland are included in various official and unofficial geographic regions. Much of the Baltimore–Washington corridor lies just south of the Piedmont in the Coastal Plain, earthquakes in Maryland are infrequent and small due to the states distance from seismic/earthquake zones. The M5.8 Virginia earthquake in 2011 was felt moderately throughout Maryland, buildings in the state are not well-designed for earthquakes and can suffer damage easily. The lack of any glacial history accounts for the scarcity of Marylands natural lakes, laurel Oxbow Lake is an over one-hundred-year-old 55-acre natural lake two miles north of Maryland City and adjacent to Russett. Chews Lake is a natural lake two miles south-southeast of Upper Marlboro. There are numerous lakes, the largest of them being the Deep Creek Lake. Maryland has shale formations containing natural gas, where fracking is theoretically possible, as is typical of states on the East Coast, Marylands plant life is abundant and healthy. Middle Atlantic coastal forests, typical of the southeastern Atlantic coastal plain, grow around Chesapeake Bay, moving west, a mixture of Northeastern coastal forests and Southeastern mixed forests cover the central part of the state
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