Chapter 11

Mr. Felton Mathew, merchant in London, obtained a patent for the above-mentioned object, which may be found in the Repertory of Arts, vol. V. page 73. Mr. Mathew used a press with a lever, the bottom made with stout deal or oak timber, fit for the purpose, raised with strong feet a convenient distance from the ground, so as to admit the beer to run off into whatever is prepared to receive it; into the back of it is let a strong piece of timber, or any other fit material, to secure one end of the lever, the top of which should work on an iron bolt or pin; when the lever is thus prepared, get your yest into hair-cloth bags, or, if not conveniently had, into coarse canvas bags; when filled, tie them securely at the mouth, and place one bag at a time in a trough of a proper size with a false bottom full of holes, on this bottom should be placed an oblong perforated shape, about the form of a brick mould; in this oblong shape or box, without either bottom or top, is placed the bag containing the yest, on which the press is let down, and gradually forced, as the beer exudes, or gradually runs off; when no more liquid runs from the shape, the press is taken off, and the bag opened, its contents taken out, which will crumble to pieces; in this state it should be thinly spread on canvass, previously stretched in frames, which will permit the heated air of the kiln to pass through it in all directions, and thus gradually finish the process to perfect dryness, which will be completely effected by ninety degrees of heat: at the commencement of the drying, it would be proper to pass the edge of a board over each frame, in order to reduce the lumps of yest, and thereby make them as small as possible. When completely dry, put it into tight casks or bottles so as to exclude air and moisture: thus secured, it will preserve good as long as wanted in any climate, and be found a valuable article of domestic economy, as well as medicine. When to be used, the necessary quantity should be dissolved in a little warm water, at the temperature of from eighty to ninety degrees of heat, with the addition of a proportionate quantity of sugar; the addition of sugar is only recommended when used to raise bread, but not when given as medicine; in the opinions of several intelligent men, this is considered the simplest and most effectual method of preserving yest, and, as such, is hereby strongly recommended.

_To make a substitute for Brewer's Yest._

Take six pounds of ground malt, and three gallons of boiling water, mash them together well, cover the mixture, and let it stand three hours, then draw off the liquor, and put two pounds of brown sugar to each gallon, stirring it well till the sugar is dissolved, then put it in a cask just large enough to contain it, covering the bung hole with brown paper; keep this cask in a temperature of ninety-eight degrees. Prepare the same quantity of malt and boiling water as before, but without sugar, then mix all together, and add one quart of yest; let your cask stand open for forty-eight hours, and it will be fit for use. The quart of yest should not be added to these two extracts at a higher heat than eighty degrees.

_Another method to make twenty-six gallons of the substitute._

Put twenty-six ounces of hops to as many gallons of water, boil it for two hours, or until you reduce the liquor to sixteen gallons; add malt and sugar in the proportion before mentioned, and mash your malt at the heat of one hundred and ninety degrees; let it stand two hours and a half, then strain it off, and add to the malt ten gallons more of water at the same degree of heat, and mash a second time; let it stand two hours, then strain it off as before; when your first mash is blood heat, or ninety-eight, put to it one gallon of the preceding substitute, mix it well, and let it stand ten hours; then take the produce of the second mash, and add it, at ninety-eight, to the rest, mix it well, and let it stand six hours, it will be then fit for use in the same manner, and for the same purposes as brewer's yest is applied; the advantages alleged in favour of this method are, that it will keep sweet and good longer than brewer's yest, and in any reason or temperature be fit for use.

_Brewer's Yest._

May be generated in the following way: Take one pound of leaven, made with wheaten flour, such as the French generally use to raise their bread, dilute the pound of leaven with water or wort, the latter to choose at ninety degrees of heat, add it to your wort at the heat of sixty-five, supposing your barrel to be filled with wort at this heat; then add your leaven, diluted as mentioned, until your cask be full; to effect which, with less waste and more certainty, it may be better to put into your barrel the diluted leaven first, then fill up with wort at the temperature mentioned; after a day or two the beer will begin to work out yest, and will serve as a ferment for another brewing; thus, after three or four brewings, your yest will become so improved that it will be nearly equal to any brewer's yest, and the experiment in certain situations is well worth trying, when a proper ferment is wanted and cannot be otherwise procured.

_Process for making and preparing Claret Wine for shipping; without which preparation such wines are considered unfit for exportation, being in its natural state about the strength of our common Cider._

Claret wine, before the French revolution, was the staple article of export from the great commercial City of Bordeaux, to every part of Europe. And, it may be presumed, will soon again reassume its wanted importance. The vintage generally begins, for making this sort of wine, about the middle or latter end of September, and is generally finished in all the month of October. The mode by which the juice is expressed from the grape, is by the workmen trampling them with their bare feet in a large reservoir or cooler, (not the cleanest operation in the world,) which has an inclination to the point where the spout or spouts are placed for taking off the expressed juice, which is conveyed to large open vats, that are thus filled with this juice to within ten or twelve inches of the upper edge; this space is left to make room for the fermentation, which spontaneously takes place in this liquor. After the first fermentation is over, and the wine begins to purify itself, which is ascertained by means of a small cock placed in the side of the vat, and takes place generally by the middle of February, or beginning of March, in the following year; it is then racked off into hogsheads, carefully cleansed, and a match of sulphur burned in each cask before filling; when thus racked off, it is bunged up, and immediately bought up by brokers for the Bordeaux merchants, and here it is made to undergo the second or finishing fermentation, in the following manner: It may be proper here to remark, that claret wine is generally divided into three growths, first, second, and third; the first growths, namely, Latour, Lafeet, and Chateaux Margo, are uniformly rented for a term of years, at a given price, to English merchants, through whom, or their agents _only_ is there a possibility of procuring any portion of this wine. The second growths are shipped to the different markets of Europe, North and South America; and the third growth principally to Holland and Hamburgh. In order to strengthen the natural body of claret wine, and to render it capable of bearing the transition of the sea, the first and second growths are allowed from ten to fifteen gallons of good Alicant wine to every hogshead, with one quart of stum.[8] The casks are then filled up and bunged down. They are then ranged three tier high from one end of the cellar to the other, each tier about eighteen inches, with two stanchions of stout pine plank, firmly placed between the heads of each hogshead, from one end of the cellar to the other, until they have reached, and are supported by, the end walls of the building. This precaution is necessary to guard against the force of fermentation, which is often so strong as to burst out the heads of the hogsheads, notwithstanding the precautions taken to secure them in the situation during the summer heats. The wine cooper, who has the charge of these wines, regularly visits them twice a day, morning and evening, in order to see the condition of the casks, and when he finds the fermentation too strong, he gives vent, and thus prevents the bursting of the casks. The third, or inferior growth, is exactly treated in same way, with the single exception of having Benicarlo wine substituted for Alicant in preparing them for their second fermentation, as cheaper and better suited to their quality; both these wines are of Spanish growth, and brought to Bordeaux by the canal of Languedoc: they are naturally of a much stronger body than native claret. Thus mixed and fermented, the claret becomes fortified, and rendered capable of bearing the transition of seas and climates. About the latter end of September, or beginning of October, the fermentation of these wines begins to slacken, and they gradually become fine; in this state they are racked off into fresh hogsheads carefully cleansed, and a match of sulphur burned in each before filling. After this operation, they are suffered to remain undisturbed (save that they are occasionally ullaged,) till about to be shipped, when they are racked off a second time, and fined down with the white of ten eggs to each hogshead; these whites are well beat up together with a small handful of white salt; after this fining, when rested, the hogsheads are filled up again with pure wine, and then carefully bunged down with wooden bungs, surrounded with clean linen to prevent leaking; in this state the wines are immediately shipped. Here it may be proper to state, that the lees that remain on the different hogsheads that have been racked off, are collected and put into pipes of one hundred and forty, or one hundred and fifty gallons each, and this lee wine, as it is termed, is fined down again with a proportionate number of eggs and salt. After which, it is generally shipped off as third growth, or used at table mixed with water. If at any time hereafter the method herein given of making and preparing claret wine for shipping, as practised in Bordeaux and its neighbourhood, should be applied to the red wines of this country, particularly those of Kaskaskias; it may be proper here to give a description of the mode in which these wines are racked, which will be found simple, effectual, and expeditious; I mean for the lower or ground tiers. The upper, or more elevated ones, rack themselves, without coercion of any kind. When you are about to rack a hogshead of wine upon the ground tier, you place your empty hogshead close to the full one, in which you then put your brass racking cock; on the nozzle of which cock you tie on a leather hose, which is generally from three to four feet long; on the other end of this hose is a brass pipe, the size of the tap hole, with a projecting shoulder towards the hose to facilitate knocking in this pipe into the empty hogshead, which is then removed a sufficient distance from the full hogshead in order to stretch the hose, now communicating with both. The cock is then turned, and the wine soon finds its level in the empty hogshead; then a large sized bellows, with an angular nozzle, and sharp iron feet towards the handle, which feet are forced down into the hoops of the cask on which it rests, in order to keep this bellows stationary, whilst the nozzle is hammered in tight at the bung hole of the racking hogshead; the bellows is then worked by one man, and in about five minutes the racking of the hogshead is completed. The pressure of the air introduced into the hogshead, by the bellows, acts so forcibly on the surface of the liquor, that it requires but a few minutes to finish the operation; when the cock is stopped, the hose taken off, and a new operation commences. This mode may possibly, in some cases, be advantageously applied to racking off beer, ale, and cider.

[8] Stum is a certain quantity of white wine, strongly impregnated with sulphur. The mode of preparing it is as follows: A hogshead half filled with good white wine, or what is termed in French _vin de grave_; from fifteen to twenty long matches of sulphur are successively burned to this hogshead, with the bunghole closed. After this operation, the white wine becomes so impregnated with sulphur, that it has acquired all its taste and flavour, and is thus used as a ferment.

_Brewing Company._

It is obvious to very slight observation, that the day is not distant when the brewing trade in this country will, as in England, become an object of great national importance, highly deserving the protection and encouragement of our general government, by freeing its produce from all duty, and thereby affording further inducements to the speculating and enterprising capitalists of this country to embark their funds in a trade that, above all others, is the best calculated to make them a sure and profitable return. In addition to the pleasing consideration that they are thereby combating and putting down the greatest immorality our country is chargeable with, namely, the too great use of ardent spirits, substituting in their place a wholesome and invigorating beverage. The person, therefore, whoever he may be, who contributes his money, or his talents, to this useful and moral purpose, deserves to rank high among the best friends of his country.

Under these impressions it is that I beg leave to recommend to my fellow citizens the immediate establishment of a brewing company, with a capital of from thirty to forty thousand dollars, to be subscribed for in shares the most likely to be made up. With either of these sums a handsome beginning could be made, and the profits would in a few years encourage and justify enlargement to any prudent extent that could be reasonably wished for or required. In proof of the correctness of this opinion, I will beg leave to state a fact that has happened in my own time. When the mercantile house of Beamish & Crawford, of Cork, erected a porter brewery in that city, about twenty-five years ago, that establishment was the first of the kind in that town, and then stood alone, and notwithstanding that many large and rich ones in the same business have since been added, the original company have so progressed in fame and fortune, as to be now considered one of the first-rate breweries in Europe; and by the improved quality of their porter have, in a great degree, excluded the English from the West India market, their porter getting the preference there, as well as in Bristol and Liverpool, to which places large quantities are annually sent by that company. How much stronger inducements have we to form similar establishments in this country, where our excise on brewery produce bears no sort of proportion with that paid in England, and does not here exceed five per cent. on brewery sales. This being a war tax, it may be presumed it will not continue long. Our capacity to raise barley and hops, in as high perfection as in any part of Europe, is acknowledged; all then that is wanting is encouragement; afford this to our farmers, and they will soon convince you that no assertion is better founded. If so, the sooner a company of this description is formed the better for those who may be concerned; and for this plain reason, that notwithstanding the enormous excise chargeable on the raw materials and produce of the brewery in England, large fortunes have been, and are daily accumulating in that country by the judicious exercise of the brewing trade, as will appear by the following statement of the quantity of porter alone (beside other malt liquors) brewed by the twelve first breweries in London, in one year, ending 5th of July, 1810.

_Barrels of Porter._ Barclay, Perkins & Co. 235,053 Read, Mecar & Co. 211,009 Trueman & Hanbury. 144,990 Felix, Calvert & Co. 133,493 Whitebread & Co. 110,939 Amery, Meux & Co. 93,660 Combe & Co. 85,150 Brown & Perry. 84,475 Godwin, Skinner & Co. 74,223 Elliot & Co. 57,851 Taylor. 54,510 Cloyer & Co. 41,590 --------- Total quantity of Barrels of Porter, 1,326,943

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NOTICE.

The author informs those persons who may feel disposed to engage in the brewing and malting trades, that he can furnish them with ground plans, and sections of elevation, both of breweries and malt houses, on different scales, whether intended to be erected together, or separately, as will be found to unite, economy, convenience, and effect, joined to a considerable saving to those who are not themselves judges of such erections, or how they should be disposed. An experience of twenty-five years in both businesses, accompanied by a diligent and attentive practice, justifies these assertions.

His terms will be found reasonable, and all letters (post paid) addressed to Joseph Coppinger, 193 Duane-street, New-York, will receive attention.

A few copies of this work may be had by applying as above; but any number may be had at 45 John-street.

TANNING.

The following is the French mode of tanning all kinds of leather in a short time, highly important to the manufacturers of leather in this country, as it points out a secure and profitable mode of turning their capital twelve or thirteen times in a year, instead of once.

_Washing Hides._

The best method of washing hides is to stretch them in a frame, and place them, thus stretched, in running water. If running water cannot be conveniently had, still water can be made to answer by frequent stirrings and agitations; the remainder of the operation of cleansing is performed as in the common way.

_On taking off the Hair._

Begin by shaking some lime in a pit, to which put a great quantity of water, then stir this water well, that it may become saturated with the lime, then place your hides in the pit perpendicularly; for this purpose, several wooden poles should be fixed across the pit; to these poles the hides are to be fastened with strings at proper distances, each hide being first cut in two; whilst the hides were thus placed in the lime water, the lime itself, which had deposited on the bottom of the pit, was frequently stirred up to increase the strength of the water, and to make it more operative; the hair thus treated, will, in about eight days, come off the hide with great ease. A shorter and a better method may effect this purpose in two days; that is, to plunge the hides, after being washed and cleaned, into a solution of tan, which (having been already used) contains no longer any of the tanning principle, mixed with a five hundredth, or even a thousandth part of the oil of vitriol, commonly called sulphuric acid; this operation not only takes off the hair, but raises and swells the hide; as, in the old way, is generally effected by barley sourings. However, further swelling and raising is necessary, and the hides should again be plunged in another quantity of spent tan-water mixed with the one thousandth part of the oil of vitriol, and thus steeped a second time; their swelling and raising will be completed in about forty-eight hours; after this operation the hides will acquire a yellow colour, even to the interior part of their substance. To determine if the swelling and raising be sufficiently completed, let one of the corners of the hide be cut, and if it is in a proper state there will not appear any white streak in the middle, but the hide throughout its whole substance will have acquired a yellow colour, and semi-transparent appearance. Mr. S---- is of opinion, that swelling and raising hides is not necessary, and that the hides tanned without this operation are less permeable to water. On tanning on the new principle, as practised by Mr. S----, he places several rows of casks on stillings sufficiently elevated above the ground to place a can or tub under them; these casks were filled with fresh finely ground tan, then a certain quantity of water was poured into the first of them, which water, as it ran through the tan, exhausted and carried off the soluble part, and as fast as it ran into the vessels below, was taken away and poured on the second cask, and so on successively until the solution was sufficiently saturated, and thus it may have been brought to ten or twelve degrees of the arometer for salts. In order to exhaust the tan of the first cask, Mr. S---- continued pouring water on the first cask until it ran off clear; at which time the tan was deprived of its soluble part; these liquors, as it may be easily conceived, were carefully kept for future operations; large wooden vats are considered the best sort of vessels for holding this solution, as well as for making and preparing it; hogsheads, on a small scale, may be made to answer. It is particularly in the use of this solution that Mr. S----'s method consists; the quickness with which the solution acts is truly astonishing, and when we see it, there is cause of surprise in thinking why it was not found out before. As soon as the hides are taken out of the water, impregnated with sulphuric acid, Mr. S---- puts them into a weak solution of tan, in which he leaves them for the space of one or two hours; he afterwards plunges them into other solutions of tan, more or less charged with the tanning principle, in proportion to their strength, so that in the experiments at which we were present, some heavy hides were tanned in six or eight days, others in twenty and twenty-five days. In placing the hides in the solutions, some precautions are necessary; the hides should be suspended on a wheel, or in a frame where they should be stretched, and placed one inch apart, so as to admit the solution freely about them; Mr. S---- recommends cutting off the head and the neck of the hide, and a slip down each side, in which slip the feet and belly part are to be comprehended; and the circumstance which determines Mr. S---- to cut the hide in this manner is, that the feet, and the parts that are near the belly, are more spongy and more easily penetrated by the tan; and as they produce leather of an inferior quality they may be more advantageously tanned separately, than put promiscuously into the solutions of tan with the rest. The remaining part of the hide is to be divided into two or more parts or pieces, so as to be easily placed in the vats or casks.

_Drying the Hides._