Chapter 10

These worts are to be boiled one hour without the hops, in order to afford the greater facility of skimming the fat off the surface. After they have boiled the first half hour, the fire is damped, the boil left to subside, and the copper to be then carefully skimmed. (This points out the necessity of an open copper for this operation.) After which, the fire is started again, and the worts made to boil another half hour, and skimmed a second time in the same way; after which the hops and mustard are added with three gallons of the _essentia bina_, and then boiled for one hour and a half, as hard as the copper will allow without boiling over or wasting; the fire is then drawn, ash-pit and copper doors left open, the copper covered, and suffered to stand two hours, then struck off on the hop back. The temperature of the external air at the time you brew this quality of beer should not be higher than fifty degrees. Your first, or mashing liquor, should boil, then run your whole complement into your mash tun, which when cooled down to one hundred and sixty-five, begin putting in your malt, one sack at a time, and mash for one hour and a quarter, stand one hour, run down as fine as you can, yet smartly; second mash one hundred and eighty-five, need not boil, but when brought to that heat in your copper, begin mashing, and mash well for three quarters of an hour, stand two hours; boil, skim, and hop, as already directed. It is to be understood that the produce of these two mashes are to be boiled together, forming a clear length, when cleansed, of twenty-seven barrels; pitch your worts at sixty, previously mixing in a tub, fifteen gallons of your wort at seventy, with one gallon of solid yest, some time before pitching, which will give it time to catch before adding to the remainder of the wort. Twelve hours after another gallon of pure yest is to be added, and the tun well roused, then covered; the attenuation suffered to proceed to eighty degrees, _but not higher_. This mode of pitching worts might be successfully applied to other qualities of beer and ale, and will be found a safe and good process.

_Filtering Operation._

(With a Plate.)

This simple operation, if my view of its effects on malt liquors, as well as other fermented liquors, be correct, will do more towards their improvement and preservation, than any thing hitherto attempted to be tried on them, after their fermentation has been completed; and for this plain reason, that it will at once disengage them from all fermentable matter, and render them transparently fine and preserving; thus immediately fitting them for the bottle, or putting up into tight casks, for home consumption or exportation, which will soon recover the beer or ale so treated from the flatness that will necessarily be induced by a long exposure to the air during the continuance of the operation; further to remedy which, I would recommend putting into each barrel, before the cask is filled with this beer, half a pound of ground rice, then fill, bung down tight, and in a short time briskness and activity will be restored to the liquor, whether intended for draft or bottle. This mode might, with equal success, be applied to every kind of fermented liquor, particularly to cider, wine, and perry, also to river and rain water. There are two modes of filtration, one by descent, the other by ascent; the latter operation seems to be the most perfect, though not the most economical or expeditious.

The preparation of the filtering medium is as follows. Your filtering vessel should be in proportion to the scale of work you intend operating on. The vessel containing the filter, should have the form somewhat of an inverted cone, in proportion wider at top than at bottom; over the bottom of this vessel should be placed a false one, about three or four inches distant from the other; this upper bottom should be perforated with holes, rather large bored, at the angles of every square inch of its surface; your fake bottom being laid, provide two pieces of clean thick blanketing the full size of the vessel, lay these pieces one over the other, over them a stratum six inches deep, of rather coarsely pounded charcoal; this should be previously wetted with some of the beer or ale, till brought to the consistence of coarse mortar; over this lay another stratum of fine clean pit sand, and so on, stratum super stratum, of sand and charcoal, till you have reached within six inches of the top; the cover of this vessel, which is also perforated with holes somewhat smaller than those of the bottom, is let down in the vessel to within one inch of the filtering medium, and in that position is well secured by buttons, or otherwise. When you filter by descent, you run your liquor over this cover, which, by means of the holes, will be distributed evenly over the upper surface of the filter; and so you continue running on your liquor as fast as you see the operation will take it.

When you wish to filter by ascent, you introduce the liquor to be filtered between the two bottoms. As the fountain which supplies this liquor is higher than the filtering vessel, it will naturally force its way through the false bottom, filtering medium, &c., until it runs off pure at spout F into the receiver G. Those persons who live on the banks, or in the vicinity of our great rivers, such as the Missouri, Ohio, Mississippi, &c., may purify their drinking water in this way, with great advantage to their health, and consequent increase of comfort to themselves and families. It is also well adapted to the use of those who navigate these waters, particularly such as proceed in steam-boats, where convenient room can be always found for such useful and salutary purposes, and to them I strongly recommend its use. It may also be advantageously applied to filtering rain water, which, to some constitutions, may be more congenial than either spring or river water.

_Returned Beer, to make the most of, and double its value._

Suppose, for example, you have one hundred and fifty barrels of this beer, (or in that proportion, adjust your mixing ingredients accordingly,) put the whole into one vat that it will fill; then take half a barrel of colouring, twenty-eight pounds cream of tartar, twenty-eight pounds of ground alum, one pound of salt of steel, otherwise called green copperas, with two barrels of strong finings; mix these ingredients well together, put them into your vat, and rouse well; after which, let the vat remain open for three days; then shut down the scuttle close, and sand it over; in one fortnight it will be fit for use; your own good sense will then direct its application.

_To bring several sorts of Beer which have been mixed to one uniform taste._

EXAMPLE.

Suppose you have one hundred barrels of this description in your vat; take six pounds of porter extract, six pounds of orange peel, ground, one pound of heading, composed of half a pound of alum, with half a pound of green copperas mixed, six pounds of Indian bark; mix these ingredients with one butt of finings, rouse your vat well, let it remain open three days, then close down your vat, and sand it over; it will be fit in one fortnight to use.

_Finings, the best method of preparing them._

A very important object indeed, is finings in the management of porter and brown beers, and sometimes the paler kinds need their agency before they will become transparently fine: without this quality no beer can be acceptable to the consumer, and should be always a particular aim of the brewers to obtain. Take five pounds of isinglass, beat each piece in succession on a stone or iron weight, until you find you can conveniently shred it into small pieces, and so treat every piece until you have got through the whole; thus shredded, steep it in sour porter or strong beer that is very fine, then set the beer and the isinglass on the fire, and there let it remain till you raise the heat to one hundred and ninety, but no higher, keeping it, while on the fire, constantly stirring; then have your hogshead of clear beer ready, strain your dissolved isinglass through a hair sieve into it, which you must take care to mix well; thus assimilated it will be fit for use in twelve hours.

It is worth remarking, that at the time of sending out porter or brown beer to your customers is the time to put in both your fining and heading, the jolting it then gets in the carriage will assist its fining more effectually, after it has rested a few days in the customer's cellar.

_Heading._

Is variously composed, and differently prepared; what is here recommended will be found safe and effectual. Porter, or brown stout, when intended for draught, should never be sent out in the cask without fining and heading; the usual practice is to put your heading into your fining, and so both into the cask just before filling up and bunging down. The proportion for one hogshead of sixty-three gallons is three half pints of fining, with as much heading put into the fining as you can take up upon a cent piece; the heading here recommended is composed of equal parts of sal martus (or green copperas) and alum, both finely powdered and mixed in equal parts, so as to be intimately blended with each other before using. The advantages derivable from heading are merely apparent, giving a close frothy head to the beer in the quart or mug it is drawn in; supporting the vulgar prejudice, that such beer is better and stronger than that where no such appearance manifests itself.

_Bottling Beer._

This is a branch of trade, that, under proper management, might be made very productive and profitable, whereas, in the manner it is now generally conducted, proves a losing one, occasioned by the great breakage of bottles, arising from the impure state of the beer at the time of putting into bottle. In consequence of this bad management, I have known a person, extensive in the trade, to lose on an average from two to three dozen bottles, as well as beer, on every hogshead he put up which happened to lie over till summer, or was bottled in that season; this loss was too heavy to expect much profit from a business so conducted; to obviate both these consequences, I would recommend beer, ale, and porter, intended for the bottle, to be carefully filtered through charcoal and sand, as directed in the operation of filtering; being thus purified from all its feculencies and fermentable matter, it will be in the best possible state for taking the bottle, in that mild and gentle way that will not endanger the loss of one or the other. It will further have the good effect of recovering the beer or ale, thus filtered, from the flatness that will necessarily be induced by that operation, giving the liquor all the briskness and activity that can be wished for. If beer, porter, or ale, be intended for exportation to a warmer climate than our own, the operation will be found particularly suited to it. Choose your corks of the best quality, and steep them in pure strong spirit from the evening before you begin your bottling operation; this precaution is essentially necessary to all beer intended to be shipped, or sent off to a warmer climate than our own, such as the East and West Indies, South America, &c. In more temperate climes, the simple precaution of filtering alone will be found to answer every necessary purpose, without steeping the corks in spirits. But suppose you bottle for home consumption, in that case you will naturally wish to have your beer, ale, and porter, get up in the bottle in as short a space of time as possible, in that case you should pack away your bottles in dry straw in summer, in sawdust in winter, as your object at that season will naturally be rather to accelerate than retard fermentation; here you should carefully watch its progress from day to day, by drawing a bottle from the centre of the heap, as nearly as you can get at it; place this bottle between you and the light, and if you perceive a chain of small bubbles in the neck of the bottle, immediately under the cork, you may conclude your beer is up in the bottle, then draw a few more bottles, and if the same appearance continues in them also, it is time to draw all your bottles from the heap they were originally packed in, and set them on their bottoms in a square frame ten inches deep, size optional; fill up this frame with the bottles of porter, or ale, so drawn in a ripe state, then get one or more bushels of bay salt, and scatter it as evenly as you can over the bottles, until the space between their necks is nearly half filled; then another course of bottles may be sunk between these, with their necks down through the salt, so as to form an upper tier; thus treated, not a single bottle will be found to break from the force of fermentation, and the salt will answer for a fresh supply of bottles, as often as you may find it necessary to draw, or send them out, this quantity will answer your purpose for years, if you only keep it dry; another advantage, and no small one, derivable from a bottling operation conducted in this way, will be, that a loft will be found more convenient for the purpose than a ground floor, as less damp, and more likely to preserve the salt dry, which a more moist atmosphere would naturally dissolve. The practice here recommended may, with equal success, be applied to cider and perry.

_Brewing Coppers, the best method of setting them._

This article, at a first view, may not appear to have much connexion with brewing, but, when attentively considered, it has a very material one, as also with economy, by saving nearly one half the fuel. It is a well-known fact in brewing, that the quicker and stronger the operation of boiling is performed, the better such beer will preserve, and the sooner it will become fine; although this opinion is combated by many, experience has proved it in my practice. I will suppose the copper you are about to set to contain two thousand gallons, the diameter of its bottom, five feet; let your fire blocks, if possible, be of soapstone, one for each side, and one for the end, of sufficient thickness and length, and full twelve inches deep, to the top of your sleepers; three courses of brick, sloped off from the top of the fire stone, with the usual quantity of mortar, and plastered over, will afford sufficient elevation for the fire to act on the bottom of the copper, leaving a space of about eighteen or twenty inches from the bottom to the top of the sleepers; the breadth of the fireplace need not exceed twenty-six inches. When the copper is about to be placed on the blocks, by swinging, or otherwise, three feet of the bottom of the copper should be on one side from the centre of the furnace, and but two feet on the other; I would have but one flue or entrance for the fire to round this copper, which flue should be placed on the three feet side, twenty-four inches long at the mouth; distance of the brick work from the copper, six inches, to narrow to five at the closing; the first closing to be three feet high on the side of the copper; the second closing, to be two feet above that, leaving twenty-one inches clear flue, allowing three inches for the thickness of the brick and mortar; the throat of the first flue, leading into the second; twenty-four inches distance of upper flue from the copper, five inches closing into four and a half inches at top. A short distance above the top of your copper should be placed an iron register to regulate the fire, so contrived as to be handily worked backward and forward by the brewer, or the man tending the fire, as circumstances may direct. The furnace door should be in two parts, one to hang on each side of the frame, and so lap over a small round hole, with a sliding shut to it, should be fixed in one of these doors, to admit the iron slicer to stir the fire. The clear of the furnace frame need not exceed sixteen inches high, by eighteen inches wide. A copper so set and proportioned, by being kept close covered at top, might be expected to boil cold water in one hour and fifteen minutes, perhaps in one hour, and that with a great saving of fuel compared with the same sized copper set in the ordinary way.

_Pumps, the best and most economical construction, also the most effectual, and least liable to fail or get out of order; how best treated in cold weather to prevent freezing, or when frozen to remove the inconvenience._

Freezing often retards the brewer's operations, and gives him considerable trouble and delay. To obviate these inconveniences, I would recommend having the rod of wood, instead of iron, so long as to work in a brass chamber, two feet above the lower box; if the pump be long, the rod may be made with joints of iron, and keys properly made, so as to have it in two, three, or four pieces, capable of being taken asunder; suppose the diameter of your chamber to be six inches, I would have the diameter of the rod five inches, which, being so much lighter than the column of water it displaces, will make the stroke comparatively light and easy to the horse, and not near so great a strain on the pump, delivering as much water or wort, it is expected, as will be found necessary for all the purposes of a brewery. But should it so happen, that any deficiency is found in the quantity of water and wort so delivered, it is only necessary to reduce the diameter of the wooden rod, from one quarter to half an inch more, and this will proportionably augment the quantity of water and wort delivered at each stroke. The water pumps, which in winter are exposed to the effects of the external air, should have a casing round them of boards from the level of the ground to half their height above it, which casing should be stuffed with dry hay, straw, or shavings, and well rammed; this casing should be water-tight round the pump, at the top, and a cock placed over it on one side of the pump, to let off the standing water; then stuff the mouth of the pump with hay or straw, and so treated the remaining water in the pump will never freeze in the coldest winter.

But where these precautions have not been taken, and the charge in your pump becomes frozen, and you wish to clear it, get one quart of bay salt, throw it into your pump, stop the mouth of it at the top, and in the course of a few hours the salt will have dissolved the ice in your pump, and you may go to work; this is much more effectual and less troublesome than using hot water, which must be repeated in great quantities before it will produce its effect.

_Cleansing Casks._

Trifling and simple as this operation may appear, it is still one that is highly important to the brewer, and requires minute and constant attention. Burning and steaming casks seems to be two most effectual modes of accomplishing this important object. If your casks have been long in use, and thereby contracted any musty or bad smell, the best way is to open them; wash them well out with boiling water; set them to dry, and then fire them, after which, they may be washed out again with hot water, and, when dry, headed for use; every cask after emptying, that is not perfectly sweet, should be treated in this way, particularly when intended for stock or keeping beer. New casks that have never been used, are best prepared by steaming them, and a small boiler, containing from sixty to one hundred gallons will be best suited to this purpose. If you have tin pipes communicating from one cask to another, you can steam four or five at a time, and the work goes on expeditiously. Fresh emptied small beer, and single-ale casks, can be sufficiently cleansed by chaining them; after which, rincing them out with hot water will be found a sufficient cleansing for such casks, as they are generally but a short time on draught. The operation of chaining casks is performed by putting into them, with boiling water, a small iron chain, two or three yards long, and then tossing your cask several times round and round so as to get the chain to rub, and act upon every part of the inside head, &c., this will take off the yest, &c. The smoother and evener all brewers' casks are made on their inside the better, as they are thereby the more easily cleaned. Every brewer should be particular in recommending to his customers carefully to cork up every cask as drawn off--by this simple precaution they will be preserved sweet for months, while the neglect of it will cause them to get foul in a short time, to the great increase of trouble and expense to the brewer before he can sufficiently purify them. It is also a necessary precaution to keep casks, when brought home, from the action of the sun and weather, by placing them under proper sheds; where casks are supposed to occupy one fifth of the brewer's active capital, they should at all times be carefully looked after.

_The following processes are given principally for the use of gentlemen farmers, housekeepers, and others, who may occasionally wish, as well as find their account, in brewing their Mead or Metheglin._

THE PROCESS.

For every pipe of mead allow one hundred and sixty-eight pounds of honey. On a small scale, take ten gallons of water, two gallons of honey, with a handful of raced ginger, and two lemons, cut them in slices, and put them, with the honey and ginger, into the water, boil for half an hour, carefully skimming all the time; use a strong ferment, and attenuate high, not under seventy-eight; in the boiling add two ounces of hops to the above ten gallons of water and two gallons of honey. In about three weeks, or one month, after cleansing and working off, this mead will be fit to bottle. This liquor, when thus made, is wholesome and pleasant, and little, if any, inferior to the best white wines. It is particularly grateful in summer, when drank mixed with water.

_Ginger Wine._

Take sixteen quarts of water, boil it, add one pound of bruised ginger, infuse it in the water for forty-eight hours, placed in a cask in some warm situation; after which time strain off this liquor, add to it eight pounds of lump sugar, seven quarts of brandy, the juice of twelve lemons, and the rinds of as many Seville oranges; cut them, steep the fruit, and the rinds of the oranges, for twelve hours in the brandy, strain your brandy, add it to your other ingredients, bung up your cask, and in three or four weeks it will be fine; if it should not, a little dissolved isinglass will soon make it so.

_Currant Wine._

Take five gallons of currant juice, and put it into a ten gallon cask, with twenty pounds of Havanna, or lump sugar, fill the cask with water, let it ferment, with the bung out, for some days; as it wastes fill up with water; when done working, bung down; and in two or three months after it will be fit for use: two quarts of French brandy added, after the fermentation ceases, would improve the liquor, and communicate to it a preserving quality. Wine may be made from strawberries, raspberries, and cherries in the same way.

_Yest, how prepared, so as to preserve sweet and good in any climate._

This operation, I apprehend, however simple it may appear, will have very important consequences, whether we consider it as a medicine (and in putrid fevers there is, perhaps, no better known) or a ferment. It will be well worth the attention of the physician, the brewer, the distiller, the merchant, and the housekeeper, whether resident in the temperate, or in the torrid zone.