Chapter 53: A Way to Make a Fortune

"My good son-in-law, it is neither a festival nor a holiday, why are you buying so many jars of wine?" Butcher Hu stared at the jars stacked at the bottom of the courtyard, his throat moving involuntarily as he looked at Fan Jin and asked.

In the past, whenever Butcher Hu finished his work on market days after slaughtering pigs, he loved to buy two ounces of loose wine to satisfy his craving.

Ever since Fan Jin passed the imperial examinations, although he had no worries about food and clothing, the heavy drinker's gene engraved deep in his bones would still occasionally pluck at his heartstrings. If he went completely without alcohol, it would probably make him itch with restlessness again.

Fan Jin watched House Steward Fu direct the servants, brushed the non-existent dust off his hands, and then looked at Butcher Hu. "Who says one cannot buy wine when it is not a festival? Can't I buy some to store for you to drink?"

Upon hearing this, Butcher Hu was overjoyed. "My good son-in-law, are all these wines bought for me?"

His tone revealed a surge of excitement, and he looked as though he was about to jump up!

"No." Fan Jin stepped aside and answered decisively.

With Chancellor Zhou stepping in, the transfer of the estate naturally went smoothly.

Moreover, Yan Shifan, taking a fancy to Zhou Jin's connections in the literary circles, offered a relatively low price and let the estate go.

The estate, originally valued at twenty thousand taels of silver, was sold directly for eighteen thousand taels.

In other words, that estate in the suburbs of the capital was now under Fan Jin's name, counting as a property established in the capital.

At the same time, it also meant that Fan Jin was burdened with a debt.

At this moment, his heart and mind were entirely focused on repaying his benefactor's silver as soon as possible and lifting this favor off his shoulders. How could he possibly spend two or three hundred taels of silver on wine just to satisfy Butcher Hu's craving?

It was not that he had never considered letting the estate follow the old routine and plant grain and melons step by step.

However, all of that made money far too slowly!

The annual yield of the estate would probably be considered good if it brought in a net profit of eight hundred to a thousand taels.

And even so, one shouldn't complain; estates in the suburbs of the capital were in extremely high demand, and those with slightly better conditions could even be worth no less than one hundred thousand taels of silver.

The estate bought from Yan Shifan was located near the Western Hills and was notoriously barren; otherwise, it wouldn't have been worth such a small amount of silver.

Of course, even estates with poorer conditions near the capital never lacked buyers, nor could just anyone buy them if they wished.

After all, everyone knew that this was absolute hard currency. Once purchased, it could be passed down, benefiting descendants for generations to come.

Yet the greatest advantage of this estate could not resolve Fan Jin's most urgent needs.

Therefore, after much deliberation, he finally came up with a method.

That was to build a workshop on the estate to distill and refine the rice wine available on the market.

At the very beginning, he intended to distill high-concentration white liquor, but upon second thought, he felt it was too risky.

The wine circulating in ancient society was mostly rice wine, and while there were certainly people who liked white liquor, they were few and far between.

Furthermore, even if he were not a wine lover, he understood one principle: white liquor was not necessarily more popular the higher its alcohol content.

Wanting to 'educate' consumers and cultivate their preferences would take a long time.

After much consideration, he set his sights on floral water, with the possibility of expanding into floral spirits in the future.

In the biting cold of midwinter, it was precisely the time when proud plum blossoms were in bloom, so plum-scented floral water should not lack for raw materials.

Hearing that these wines were not prepared for him, the expression on Butcher Hu's face instantly froze, momentarily taking on a hint of aggrieved resentment as he silently thought that his good son-in-law was merely teasing him for fun.

As if he hadn't noticed at all, Fan Jin instructed the servants, "Go quickly and find a few iron pots, and it would be best to chop some bamboo as well."

Whether an alcohol distillation workshop could indeed be built on the estate still needed to be tested beforehand to avoid a false alarm of joy.

With Steward Fu supervising from the side, the servants were very diligent and hardworking. Before long, they brought back a few iron pots and a bundle of bamboo.

Fan Jin first instructed them to find a way to hollow out the insides of the bamboo, and then pointed to two pageboys, guiding them on the spot to set up the alcohol distillation apparatus.

Thus, before long, everyone saw a bizarre-looking contraption firmly nailed to the ground.

Everyone wore looks of confusion, whispering and exchanging glances in low voices.

Fan Jin first sent away a few servants who had signed temporary labor contracts, and then repeatedly urged the remaining people to keep their mouths shut tightly and not go shouting blindly about everywhere.

He didn't expect them to keep secrets forever, even though he held their deeds of indenture in his hands and possessed near-absolute power over their lives and deaths. He only hoped the news wouldn't leak out too early.

After all, these were people who had signed lifetime indenture contracts, but their families had not signed lifetime indenture contracts. Once someone offered them heavy rewards or threatened the lives of their families, who could guarantee they wouldn't be willing to brave death?

Just like why drug trafficking and manufacturing ran rampant in their early stages in later generations—who didn't know that was a business carrying one's head on the waistband of one's trousers?

Yet in the end, it formed a large-scale protection among relatives, villages, and even grew into a gray industrial chain!

A very important issue was that people with empty stomachs believed that even if they got themselves locked away, the money they earned could be left to their wives, children, and elderly relatives, allowing them to live in Western-style houses and drive cars.

As long as the illicit gains were not confiscated and their houses were not bulldozed, even if they faced justice after taking such desperate risks, in the eyes of their relatives and neighbors, they were 'heroes' who changed the destiny of their clan.

However, with the progress of the times and the gradual improvement of the law, illicit gains were directly confiscated or even recovered, and houses were violently demolished, plunging them into a living hell overnight. Then the so-called talk of 'heroes' naturally ceased to exist; instead, they became disasters that implicated their families!

Fan Jin was mentally prepared for the fact that the formula for distilling alcohol would inevitably leak eventually. That was true for any trade or craft; one should never expect to be the only one of your kind with no alternatives.

Once the interests involved became too great, with his puny physique, he wouldn't be able to stop it, and even if Zhou Jin were willing to shield him from the wind and rain, it would be of no avail.

"My good son-in-law, what comes next?" Butcher Hu vaguely sensed that Fan Jin was doing something extraordinary.

Fan Jin nodded slightly and said, "Have someone add water first, build a fire, and bring the water to a boil."

All the servants complied accordingly and began to busy themselves.

In distilling alcohol, one naturally could not pour all the wine and water in together right from the start; Fan Jin had not forgotten this basic physical knowledge.

If operated this way, there was no guarantee that the alcohol and water would not evaporate together. After condensation, one would only get the exact same alcohol, completely failing the purpose of distillation.

Instead, the water should be heated first, and then the heat of the water used to evaporate the alcohol. Once the alcohol vapor re-condensed and entered the bamboo tube, what flowed out would be alcohol of a much higher concentration.

Of course, limited by the environment, equipment, and other factors, it certainly could not reach laboratory results.

However, he was not very worried about whether the expected effect could be achieved.

If once wasn't enough, he would just repeat it several times. Through trial and error, he would eventually be able to distill alcohol that met the requirements.