REFRIGERATION
The refrigerating plant rests upon a massive foundation; it has three floors, including the ground floor, and covers twelve thousand five hundred square feet of the brewery premises. The system of cooling rests upon the principles first applied to this purpose, in 1849, by Gorrie, but has been improved upon during the successive stages of its development to an extent far exceeding the progress of any other scientific discovery. As applied in this brewery, the system performs its functions by means of the direct expansion of ammonia in iron pipes, placed under the ceilings and on the walls of the cellars; a far more effective and economical method than the system by which the brine, after being cooled in large tanks, is forced through the cooling pipes by means of steam pumps. The plant consists of four De La Vergne machines, each of an ice-melting capacity of 310 tons; these cool about forty cellars, or an aggregate space of 1,750,000 cubic feet, and furnish, in addition to this, all the ice-cold water required for the attemperators in the fermenting tuns, and for the coolers over which the wort passes when it leaves the cooling-tank, as explained. To describe the intricate process of cooling is a difficult task, save on the assumption that the reader fully understands the principles upon which the system is based. We must take it for granted that the reader knows that the rapid expansion of a compressed gas, as well as the volatilization of some liquids, is invariably followed by a lowering of the temperature, and that by a proper utilization of this change of temperature intense cold, to almost any degree below the freezing point, may be produced at will. The machines invented for this purpose vary considerably, both in effectiveness and cost, and in almost every country a different system is in vogue. The best American machines appear to be compounds of all the virtues and advantages of the most approved systems now in use; and it is claimed that the De La Vergne refrigerator yields to none in any respect. The principal parts of this apparatus are the boilers, expansion cocks, refrigerating coils, compressors, separating tank and ammonia condensers. The boilers are placed on the ground-floor, the machines on the next, and the condensers on the top-floor. Like every other material or agent we have thus far described, the ammonia, too, passes through a number of variously connected circuits, down into tiers upon tiers of cellars, and up again through the three floors above ground, only to recommence the same journey and repeat it again and again for the self-same purpose. The ammonia first goes in a liquid state into the cellar, where it is distributed by means of expansion cocks into the refrigerating coils; thence the three machines draw it up in a gaseous state and compress it. From the compressors, it passes into a separating tank, and here the oil is eliminated and sent to the oil-cooler, while the ammonia, still in a gaseous state, ascends to the ammonia condensers on the top-floor of the building. By the use of salt water on the outside of these condensers, the ammonia is reliquified, and in this liquid state again descends to the cellars, as before described. Still another circle within a greater circle! A recapitulation of the functions of this refrigerating plant may not be out of place. It cools 1,750,000 cubic feet of space in cellars; supplies ice-cold water for the attemperators in fermenting tuns and reduces the temperature of the wort, as it passes over the cooling pipes, to 40° Fahrenheit. During the summer months the beer to be cooled, in the latter manner, amounts on an average to two thousand barrels, daily—the maximum daily brew being twenty-seven hundred barrels.[5]
[5] Multiplied by four, these figures give present output.
THE
STEAM PLANT
The steam required in this brewery for all the operations already described, and others still to be spoken of, is generated by eight colossal boilers, each five and a half feet in diameter, and containing fifty-six four-inch tubes. They are of the horizontal return tubular type, fitted with patent furnaces and water arches, and rated at 130 horse-power, each. This boiler plant is really of double the capacity needed, and, hence, only one-half of the number of boilers is alternately in use, the other half being provided as a reserve in case of emergencies. The steam generated in these boilers drives fourteen engines. Of these, one is used in the machine shop; three serve the purposes of the refrigerating plant; two are used for the electric-light plant; three, varying from 100 to 165 horse-power, set in motion the mashing apparatus, the malt-mill, malt elevators, keg-washing machines, rotary pumps in cellar, two Otis belt elevators and four keg elevators. Two of the latter are used for lowering empty kegs into the cellar, and the other two for raising filled kegs. In addition to these, there are four more engines, one each for driving a feed-grinder and fodder-cutter in the stables, a set of revolving and suspended fans in the office, the cask-rollers in the pitch-yard and the machine for washing chips.
All these steam motors, as well as the refrigerating machines, are connected with that system of steam condensation to which we referred in describing the partial heating of brew-water by means of exhaust steam. Previous to condensation the exhaust-steam passes from the engine through an apparatus, called grease extractor, which eliminates the oil; it is then conveyed to a Gannon surface condenser and thence returned to the boilers. In this process of condensation a vacuum of from twenty-five to twenty-six inches is produced by means of an air-pump. The immense quantity of salt water used daily for the condensers of ammonia is so profitably utilized in this manner, that condensation is effected without an extra supply of water.
COOPERAGE
Cooperage is no longer a handicraft in America; the inventive genius of our people, to which we owe the greater part of the progress that has placed us at the head of civilized nations in point of machine-building, has virtually wiped out the cooper’s handicraft, and given us, in its stead, a half-dozen enormous manufacturing establishments, in which nearly all the barrels required by brewers and distillers are made by machine. There was a time when nearly every brewer had at least a smattering of the cooper’s art, and when the cellar men, employed in breweries, had to produce satisfactory evidence of having passed through the regular course of training prescribed for apprentices and journeymen by the ancient and honorable guild of coopers. Although this is now all changed, yet in so large an establishment as the one we are describing, the employment of a considerable force of coopers is indispensable. The large casks and vats, ranging in capacity from 50 to 800 barrels, which fill the cellars of the brewery, number about 1,500, and there are about 100,000 packages—i.e., barrels of thirty-one gallons, and half, quarter and sixth barrels—in constant use; and a considerable reserve stored away for emergencies. The coopers keep an accurate account of these packages and vessels, examine them from time to time, and make such repairs as their condition may require.
The pitching of barrels, which serves the two-fold purpose of facilitating the process of cleaning and preventing the beer from acquiring a smell of the wood, is performed periodically, with such methodical regularity that not a single package can escape this fiery ordeal. The pitching yard, enclosed by a wall, is the scene of this part of the cooper’s task; here, too, manual labor forms only an adjunct to steam power. Four large cask-rollers, and many smaller ones, all driven by a steam engine of ten-horse power, a pitch oven and a pitch cauldron take the place of the single implements with which, in former days, the cooper used to perform this work. After the liquid pitch has been poured into the casks, the latter are placed upon the moving rollers and continually rotated, by which process the pitch is evenly spread over the inner surface of the barrels and kegs.