And still, as signs of life appeared,
They tossed him to and fro.
They wasted o’er a scorching flame
The marrow of his bones.” * * *
The entire poem is undoubtedly familiar to every lover of drinking-songs. In it the poet describes all the manipulations incidental to the cultivation of barley, from the planting of the grain to the reaping of it; and also all the numerous and manifold operations to which the ripe cereal is subjected after it has left the farm and passed into the hands of the maltster.
The concluding process of malting, described in the quoted lines, has done its work, when John Barleycorn turns up in this brewery to begin a new series of ups and downs, calculated and designed to still further purify him and render him fit for the climax of his fate. Malt, as every one knows, is obtained by a four-fold treatment of the barley. The grain must be steeped in order to cause germination and produce diastase, the agent necessary for the conversion of starch into that saccharine matter which forms the primary essence of beer; it must be next couched and floored, when it continues to grow and germinate; and, lastly, it must be subjected to kiln-drying by which germination is terminated. When this malt, loaded upon ponderous wagons, reaches the brewery, it is at once conveyed, by means of most ingenious contrivances, into malt-scales and weighed. On its way to the enormous bins, four in number, which serve as store-houses, it is subjected to repeated processes of sifting, screening and blowing—the latter part being effected by means of air passing through flues or pipes, connected at certain intervals with the shutes through which the malt passes. The storage-bins occupy nearly the whole of one wing of the main building. They form one vast shaft, divided into four chambers, running through several stories up to the top-floor, and leaving on each floor just room enough for a narrow gallery or corridor. The malt is raised to the tower and thence distributed into these bins, which together hold about fifty-six thousand bushels of barley, and are so constructed as to facilitate the utmost cleanliness in every nook and corner of them.
The first operation of the brewer, when beginning to brew, is to grind the malt. John Barleycorn’s sufferings here begin where Burns makes them end;
“But a miller us’d him worst of all,
For he crushed him between two stones.”