There are also huge buildings next to the brewhouse, with cooling floors, into which is pumped the "hot Wort," as it is called, or beer. The surface of the floor in one of these buildings is 10,000 feet square, and I saw men with gigantic wooden shoes swimming about in this beer, which looked like a vast lake. The beer is sometimes cooled by passing it through a refrigerator which has contact with a stream of cold spring water. The cold beer is then allowed to ferment in vast rooms or squares, as large as an ordinary block of houses,—which are made to hold 2,000 barrels. It is a strange sight to look at one of these lakes of beer, the yeast rising in masses like coral reefs in a southern sea,—upon the surface of the water, and these rock-like elevations yield, after the force of the yeast is spent, to the slightest wind, giving it the appearance of a vast ocean of beer in a storm. There is one huge vat for porter that will hold 5,000 gallons, which at selling price is worth £12,000. The Great Tun of Heidelberg holds but half of this quantity. One thousand quarter-hundreds of malt are brewed daily by Barclay & Perkins.
THE GREAT PORTER TUN.
The great rival house to that of Barclay & Perkins, is that of Hanbury, Buxton & Co., in Brick-Lane, Spitalfields, covering eight acres; in which 275,000 gallons of water are used daily, obtained from a well 530 feet deep;—600,000 barrels of beer are brewed here annually. There are 150 vats, the largest of which contains 3,000 barrels, or about 100,000 gallons of beer. There are eight brewing coppers, three of which are capable of containing 800 barrels each. 700 quarters of malt can be mashed at one time in six mash tubs;—10,000 tons of coal are used annually, and there are 200 huge horses, each horse consuming 42 pounds of food per day, or about 2,500,000 pounds per annum.
There is a library with 5,000 volumes, a billiard-room, reading-room, and savings-bank, on the premises, with a benefit Club for the workmen, each member paying sixpence a week, and receiving fourteen shillings a week in case of sickness; and on the death of his wife, £8, and in the event of his own death the family receives £18. Two companies of volunteers were raised from the 800 employees of the firm, and the men are allowed one holiday in a fortnight.
The brewery of Mr. Salt, at Burton-on-Trent, has been established for eighty years, and brews annually 25,000 barrels of that peculiarly strong and bitter ale.
THE GREAT PORTER TUN.
In London it is calculated that about 6,500,000 barrels of ale, beer, and porter, are brewed annually, valued at about £20,000,000, and I think I am therefore correct in calling the English a beer-drinking people.
Everybody drinks beer in London. You can see laborers and dockmen sitting on benches outside of public houses, swilling what they call swipes, at two pence a pot. So if you drink at a Club you will see men as eminent as Mr. Bright, or Mr. Disraeli, calling for a "pint of Bass' East India Ale," or "a bottle of Stout." Even in work-houses beer is kept on tap, and were the paupers to be deprived of their beer, they would, I believe, rise and annihilate their masters. A quart bottle of good beer or porter can be got anywhere in London for sixpence, and of all the beverages that I have ever tasted, I never found anything to equal in fragrance a drink of good London "Brown Stout" on a warm summer day. A man may procure as much good beer as he can drink at a draught, for three pence, in London, at any public house or restaurant, and it is the common custom with the Cockneys to have it at every meal, and also between meals.