Part 2

The "_Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture_," at a late meeting, passed a resolution to recommend the use of Malt Liquors, in preference to Ardent Spirits, on farms;--and appointed the subscribers a Committee to procure and publish Directions to enable Farmers to Brew Beer.--They have accordingly the pleasure to send a pamphlet published by the proprietors of a patent English brewing apparatus, which was imported by a gentleman of Philadelphia; and also some directions by an eminent brewer, to enable families to brew beer with the common household utensils. The apparatus was tried last year by one of our members, and found to answer perfectly.--It was imported with the view to general utility, not to private profit, and we understand may be purchased at first cost.[4]

[4] The Editors will direct where it may be seen.

RICHARD PETERS, } JAMES MEASE, } ROBERTS VAUX, } ISAAC C. JONES, } _Committee._

_Philadelphia, June, 1820._

DIRECTIONS FOR BREWING

_With Needham & Co.'s Patent Portable Family Brewing Machine._

As the attainment of good Malt Liquor greatly depends upon the quality of the materials from which it is produced, it may be useful to give a few general instructions for distinguishing the quality of malt and hops, of which it should be only composed; but considerable practice being requisite to form a ready judgment, it will generally be more safe to buy them of some reputable dealer.

MALT.--To judge of the quality of malt, you must chew it, and if _sweet, tender, and mealy, with a brisk full flavour_, it is good; in coloured malt particular care should be taken that it is neither smoky nor burnt.[5]

[5] Malt, previous to being ground, should be passed through a screen, or sieved to remove the dust.

HOPS should be of a _bright colour, free from green leaves, of a quick pungent smell, and glutinous quality_, which will be discoverable by their adhering together, and by rubbing them in the hands. _New hops are preferable to old, after Christmas._

_To Brew Ale with Table Beer after, from the same malt and hops._--The malt should be pale, sweet, and tender, ground coarse, and the hops of a pale bright colour and glutinous quality.

If the ale is for present use, 3/4 of a pound of hops to each bushel of malt will be sufficient, but for store ale use one pound per bushel.

The machine being placed ready for use as described in the plate, figure G,[6] put into it as much cold water as will cover the perforated bottom of the extracting cylinder, and light the fire; then put as much coarse ground malt into the perforated cylinder, (see the plate, figure D,) as will three parts fill it, taking care that none goes into the centre, (which centre should be covered, (_but only_) while putting the malt in, and when mashing the malt,) nor any between the cylinder and boiler.--The malt being put in, pour through the centre as much more cold water as will just cover the malt, then make the fire good, and in one hour after stir the malt well up with a strong mashing stick, for about ten minutes, so that every particle of malt may be divided from the other: let the heat increase to 180 degrees, which you must ascertain by holding the thermometer a minute in the centre part of the machine, and when at 180 degrees of heat, stir the malt again, and after this second stirring, try the heat, and if then at 180 degrees, damp the fire well with some wet ashes to prevent the heat of the mash from increasing, and in 3 hours and a half from the time of lighting the fire, draw off the wort very gently that it may run fine, and put it into one of the coolers, and put all the hops (rubbing them through your hands to break the lumps) on the top of the wort to keep it hot till the time for returning it into the machine for boiling; having drawn off this ale wort, put into the machine through the centre as much more cold water as will cover the grains, brisken the fire, and in half an hour stir up the malt for about ten minutes, and make it 180 degrees of heat as quick as you can, then damp the fire to prevent its getting hotter, and in one hour and a half from the time of putting in the water, draw off this table beer wort gently, that it may run fine, and put it into the other cooler, and cover it over to keep it hot until the time for returning it into the machine for boiling; having drawn off this table beer wort, if you wish to make a third wort, put in as much more cold water into the machine as you think proper, and make it 170 degrees of heat as quick as you can, and draw it off in about an hour after, and put it to the last drawing off, or wort: then take the grains out of the cylinder with a hand shovel as clean as you can, and after, take out the cylinder,[7] and with a birch broom and a little water rince out the boiler clean, and put back the perforated cylinder into the boiler, and then put the first drawing off or ale wort, with all the hops, into the machine cylinder where you have taken the grains from, and cover the machine, but be sure the centre cover is off; make it boil as quick as you can, and let it boil well one hour, then damp the fire and draw it off into a cooler or coolers, which should be placed in the air where it will cool quick. Having drawn off this ale wort, return the second drawing off, or table beer wort, with the third, into the machine to the hops left from the ale wort, stir up the fire and make it boil as quick as you can, and let it boil well one hour, then put out the fire and draw off the wort, and put it into a cooler placed in the air to cool quick; when the worts in the coolers are cooled down to 70 degrees of heat by the thermometer, put the proportion of a gill of fresh thick yeast to every 9 gallons of wort in the coolers, first thinning the yeast with a little of the wort before you put it in that it may the better mix; and when the ale wort is cooled down to 60 degrees of heat, draw it off from the coolers with the yeast and sediment, and put it into the machine boiler (the machine boiler having been previously cleared from the hops and cylinder,) which forms a convenient vessel placed on its stand for the ale to ferment in, which must be kept fermenting in it with the cover off until the head has the appearance of a thick brown yeast on the surface, an inch or two deep, which will take 3 or 4 days;[8] when the head has this appearance, draw off the beer free from the yeast and bottoms into a clean cask, which must be filled full,[9] and when done working, put in a handful of dry hops, bung it down tight, and stow it in a cool cellar. This ale will be fit to tap in 3 or 4 weeks.

[6] The smoke pipe, with an upright elbow, about 3 or 4 feet, must be placed on the projecting neck of the fire-place, and with a return elbow convey the smoke through a hole, cut in the brick flue to receive it; by this method the fire will draw well.

If any smoke should come from between the boiler and fire-place, a little dry sand being dropped into the cavity will prevent it.--When the brewing is over, take off the smoke pipe and shake out the soot, which will ensure the fire drawing lively the next brewing.

[7] If the machine is large, the perforated cylinder has four handles for the purpose of easy taking it out and in by a pulley and rope suspended over its centre at a proper height.

[8] If the temperature of the weather is below 55 degrees of heat by the thermometer, it will be better to place your fermenting vessel in a situation not exposed to the cold; the cellar where you keep your beer in would most likely be a good and handy place for this purpose.

[9] If the cask intended for the ale, should not be full, fill it up from your table beer, or if more than enough, put the remainder to the table beer; but this mixing you must regulate according to the strength you want your different sorts of beer.

The second wort for table beer should be put from the coolers with yeast and sediment into an upright cask, with the cover off or top head out, at not exceeding 60 degrees of heat, and as soon as you perceive a brown yeast on the surface, draw it off free from the yeast and bottoms into a clean cask, which must be kept filled full, and when done working, put in a handful of dry hops, bung it down tight, and stow it in a cool cellar. This table beer will be fit to tap in a week, or as soon as fine.

_To make Table Ale._--Mix the first and second worts together, and ferment, and treat it the same as the ale.

_To Brew Porter or Brown Beer, with Table Beer after, from the same Malt and Hops._--Use pale and brown malt in equal quantities, ground coarse; and strong brown coloured hops of a glutinous quality. If the beer is for present draught, 3/4 pound of hops to each bushel of malt will be sufficient, but if intended for store beer, use one pound to each bushel of malt.

The process of brewing is the same as described for brewing ale with table beer after, except the heat of each mash must not be so high by 10 degrees, on account of the brown malt; the first wort fermented by itself will be stout porter, and fit to tap in 3 or 4 weeks; the second wort will be the table beer, and fit to tap in a week, or as soon as fine; but if you mix the first and second worts together, the same as for table ale, it will be good common porter.

_To Brew Table Beer only._--Let your malt be of one sort, of a full yellow colour (not brown malt) ground coarse, and strong brown coloured hops, of a glutinous quality. If for present draught 1/2 a pound of hops to each bushel of malt will be sufficient, but if for keeping two or 3 months, use one pound of hops per bushel.

The process of brewing is the same as described for brewing porter and table beer, with the addition of another wort, that is, filling the machine a third time with water before you take out the grains, and treating the third mash the same as the second.

The first drawing off or wort, with part of the second wort, to be boiled (first) one hour with all the hops, and the remainder of the second wort with the third, to be boiled next one hour to the same hops; these two boilings, when cooled down to 60 degrees of heat, (having put your yeast to it in the coolers at 70 degrees) must be put together to ferment in the machine boiler, and as soon as it has the appearance of a brown yeast on the surface, draw it off into the casks, which must be kept filled full, and when done working, put into each cask a handful of dry hops, bung it down tight, and put it into a cool cellar. Tap it in a week, or as soon as fine.

_General Remarks._--The season for brewing sound keeping beer, is from October to May.

_All Beer should be stored in cool cellars or vaults, and kept as much as possible from the common atmosphere_; and in drawing beer from a cask, if necessary to raise the vent-peg, it should be carefully tightened as soon as the beer is drawn.

When beer is intended to be kept many months, the bungs of the casks, and if bell casks are used, the whole of the head should be covered with sand or clay, which should be kept moist.

_To preserve the Machine._--When the brewing is over, wash the machine and coolers with cold or hot water, then dry them, and put them away in a dry place. When wanted to be used, they should be washed with boiling water.

_To keep Casks sweet._--It is recommended when a cask of beer is drawn off, to take out the head and scrub out the cask; then thoroughly dry and put it away in a dry place with the head out.

If it should be inconvenient to take out the head, and the cask is wanted to be filled again quickly, it may be washed quite clean with warm water, and afterwards with lime water; or the grounds being left in the cask, and every vent stopped, (bung, tap, and vent holes,) it may be kept in that state for a short time.

Casks of a bell shape are preferable for private brewing, and the patentees make them upon a principle by which the inside can be scrubbed out clean without removing the head, and at the same price as common casks of that shape.

* * * * *

The following comparative statement of the cost of Brewing Beer with Needham's apparatus, and of Beer when purchased, is given by the proprietor.--The references are to London prices, but an opinion may still be formed of the great economy of Domestic Brewing.

Daily Consumption of| Yearly Consumption| Brewers' Prices. | Yearly expense ale in a family, 3 | is 137 gallons | At 2s. 6d. per gal. | L.17 2 6 pints Do. of table | Is 137 gallons | At 8d. | 4 11 4 beer, 3 pints | | | ------------- 21 13 10

To Brew the above quantity of good Ale and Table Beer, 15-1/4 Bushels of Malt are required, the cost of which, at 10s. per Bushel, will be L.7 12 6 11-1/2 _lbs._ best Hops, for ditto, at 5s. 2 17 6----10 10 0 Yearly saving in the above quantity 11 3 10

The above calculation sufficiently proves that the Patent Brewing Machine will, to the smallest Family who purchase Brewer's Beer, pay for itself in One Year, and those who have been accustomed to Brew by the old Method, will find the beer much stronger and better by using this Machine, and very considerably less likely to be spoiled in Brewing, with a great saving in Fuel, Labour, and Time.

As it may be inconvenient, or too expensive, for many private families to purchase a brewing machine, the following Directions are subjoined, which will enable them, by the aid of the vessels used in a family, to brew a barrel of beer; and by attention, and a few experiments, they will produce an excellent beverage.

Prepare a tub for making the extract, by fitting a false bottom with numerous holes, and raised about half an inch from the real bottom, in which fix a cock for drawing off the extract. Have four bushels of malt coarsely ground, and heat your water to about 170 or 175 degrees[10] of heat, of Fahrenheit's thermometer. Then pour in the tub about thirty-eight gallons of the water, and gently stir in the malt, until it is all mixed. Cover it, and let it stand about an hour and a half; draw off the extract into a vessel, and throw in about one and a quarter pounds of hops for liquor for present use, or about two or two and a half pounds for keeping liquors; cover the vessel to keep in the heat, and pour over the malt about 26 gallons of water, of about the same heat as the first, stirring it until it is well mixed with the malt; let it stand one hour, then draw off the extract, add it to the first extract, and put them on to boil in an open kettle: this will be your strong beer. Then pour over the malt about twenty gallons of water, for small beer, at about 160 or 170 degrees of heat. This last will not require stirring, and the extract may remain covered until the kettle is ready for it. Keep the strong beer boiling smartly for about one hour and a quarter, or one hour and a half, for present use, or two hours for keeping: then pour it through a sieve or strainer, and set it to cool. Return the hops into the kettle with your third extract, or small beer, which set to boiling as soon as practicable, and continue it for about an hour and a half; then pour it through the strainer, and set it to cool. When cool, ferment according to the directions accompanying the brewing machine. The quantity of water used may be varied at the discretion of the person brewing. By diminishing the water, he may increase the strength of the liquor, or by increasing it, diminish the strength. Thus with the hops he may vary the quantity to suit his palate in the degree of bitter flavour that may be most agreeable.--For fomenting, a cask with one head taken out, will answer the same purpose as the machine boiler.

[10] NOTE.--A person who experienced its benefit and almost certainty, informs us, that he always practised looking steadily into the vapours of the brewing kettle, after the liquor (water) had been in a boiling state for some time. The moment he could distinguish the features of his face, in the surface of the water, he directed the cock to be turned; and the liquor, of course, thrown over the mash. This was an unerring substitute for a thermometer, or sachorometer. His kettle, which had been a still, held about sixty gallons.

THE SNOW STORM.

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, for April.

"'Tis only from the belief of the goodness and wisdom of a Supreme Being, that our calamities can be borne in that manner which becomes a man."--HENRY MACKENZIE.

In summer there is a beauty in the wildest moors of Scotland, and the wayfaring man who sits down for an hour's rest beside some little spring that flows unheard through the brightened moss and water-cresses, feels his weary heart revived by the silent, serene, and solitary prospect. On every side sweet sunny spots of verdure smile towards him from among the melancholy heather--unexpectedly in the solitude a stray sheep, it may be with its lambs, starts half alarmed at his motionless figure--insects large, bright, and beautiful come careering by him through the desert air--nor does the Wild want its own songsters, the grey linnet, fond of the blooming furze, and now and then the lark mounting up to heaven above the summits of the green pastoral hills.--During such a sunshiny hour, the lonely cottage on the waste seems to stand a paradise; and as he rises to pursue his journey, the traveller looks back and blesses it with a mingled emotion of delight and envy. There, thinks he, abide the children of innocence and contentment, the two most benign spirits that watch over human life.

But other thoughts arise in the mind of him who may chance to journey through the same scene in the desolation of Winter. The cold bleak sky girdles the moor as with a belt of ice--life is frozen in air and on earth. The silent is not of repose but extinction--and should a solitary human dwelling catch his eye half buried in the snow, he is sad for the sake of them whose destiny it is to abide far from the cheerful haunts of men, shrouded up in melancholy, by poverty held in thrall, or pining away in unvisited or untended sickness.

But, in truth, the heart of human life is but imperfectly discovered from its countenance; and before we can know what the summer, or what the winter yields for enjoyment or trial to our country's peasantry, we must have conversed with them in their fields and by their fire-sides; and make ourselves acquainted with the powerful ministry of the seasons, not over those objects alone that feed the eye and the imagination, but over all the incidents, occupations, and events that modify or constitute the existence of the poor.

I have a short and simple story to tell of the winter life of the moorland cottager--a story but of one evening--with a few events and no signal catastrophe--but which may haply please those hearts whose delight it is to think on the humble under-plots that are carrying on in the great Drama of life.

Two cottagers, husband and wife, were sitting by their cheerful peat-fire one winter evening, in a small lonely hut, on the edge of a wide moor, at some miles distance from any other habitation. There had been, at one time, several huts of the same kind erected close together, and inhabited by families of the poorest class of day-labourers who found work among the distant farms, and at night returned to dwellings which were rent free, with their little gardens, won from the waste.--But one family after another had dwindled away, and the turf-built huts had all fallen into ruins, except one that had always stood in the centre of this little solitary village, with its summer walls covered with the richest honeysuckles and in the midst of the brightest of all the gardens. It alone now sent up its smoke into the clear winter sky--and its little end window, now lighted up, was the only ground star that shone towards the belated traveller, if any such ventured to cross, on a winter night, a scene so dreary and desolate. The affairs of the small household were all arranged for the night. The little rough pony that had drawn in a sledge, from the heart of the Black-Moss, the fuel by whose blaze the cottiers were now sitting cheerily and the little Highland cow, whose milk enabled them to live, were standing amicably together, under cover of a rude shed, of which one side was formed by the peat stack, and which was at once byre, and stable, and hen-roost. Within, the clock ticked cheerfully as the fire-light readied its old oak-wood case across the yellow sanded floor--and a small round table stood between, covered with a snow-white cloth, on which were milk and oat cakes, the morning, mid-day, and evening meal of these frugal and contented cottiers. The spades and the mattocks of the labourer were collected into one corner, and showed that the succeeding day was the blessed Sabbath--while on the wooden chimney-piece were seen lying an open Bible ready for family worship.

The father and mother were sitting together without opening their lips, but with their hearts overflowing with happiness, for on this Saturday-night they were, every minute, expecting to hear at the latch the hand of their only daughter, a maiden of about fifteen years, who was at service with a farmer over the hills. This dutiful child was, as they knew, to bring home to them "her sair-worn penny fee," a pittance which, in the beauty of her girl-hood, she earned singing at her work, and which, in the benignity of that sinless time, she would pour with tears into the bosoms she so dearly loved. Forty shillings a year were all the wages of sweet Hannah Lee--but though she wore at her labour a tortoise-shell comb in her auburn hair, and though in the kirk none were more becomingly arrayed than she, one half, at least, of her earnings were to be reserved for the holiest of all purposes, and her kind innocent heart was gladdened when she looked on the little purse that was, on the long expected Saturday-night, to be taken from her bosom, and put, with a blessing, into the hand of her father, now growing old at his daily toils.

Of such a child the happy cottiers were thinking in their silence. And well might they be called happy. It is at that sweet season that filial piety is most beautiful.--Their own Hannah, had just outgrown the mere unthinking gladness of childhood, but had not yet reached that time, when inevitable selfishness mixes with the pure current of love. She had begun to think on what her affectionate heart had felt so long; and when she looked on the pale face and bending frame of her mother, on the deepening wrinkles, and whitening hairs of her father, often would she lie weeping for their sakes on her midnight bed--and wish that she was beside them as they slept, that she might kneel down and kiss them, and mention their names over and over again in her prayer. The parents whom before she had only loved, her expanding heart now also venerated. With gushing tenderness was now mingled a holy fear and an awful reverence. She had discerned the relation in which she, an only child, stood to her poor parents now that they were getting old, and there was not a passage in Scripture that spake of parents or of children, from Joseph sold into slavery, to Mary weeping below the Cross, that was not written, never to be obliterated, on her uncorrupted heart.