ASSING on to modern times and bidding adieu to the old brewers, brewsters, ale-wives, and tapsters, it behoves us to devote ourselves to giving some account of the brewing of the present day, thereby bringing our history up to date. With this intent, we cannot do better than commence with a few figures, startling enough, no doubt, to others than the cognoscenti, as to the magnitude of what are commonly called the Liquor Trades.
From a report drawn up by Professor Leoni Levi in 1878, at the request of the late Mr. M. T. Bass, M.P., and from recent Parliamentary returns, it appears that the total amount of capital invested in the liquor trades of the United Kingdom amounts to about one hundred and seventeen million pounds sterling. This sum is equal to more than half the total value of our exports, and is more than double the annual receipts of all the railways. About one-third of the whole National Revenue is drawn from this source.
Making due allowance for families, the persons employed directly in {332} the various trades connected with the production and distribution of alcoholic drinks are not fewer in number than one and a half million.
From these startling facts, it follows that teetotallers, before they can accomplish the total abolition of spirituous liquors, must arrange for either emigrating or giving employment to over a million persons, and must be prepared to pay one-third more taxes than they do at present.
It may be well, before proceeding further, to give a short and very simple account of brewing as it is now carried on in nearly every brewhouse in the country, for without a few general ideas on the subject many of our readers would no doubt be a little puzzled by the references to mashing tuns, vats, union rooms and such like, which occur in this chapter.
In brewing there are three principal operations: 1.—Mixing the malt with hot water; 2.—Adding hops to the infusion obtained and boiling them together; and 3.—Fermenting the liquid by putting yeast in it.
The malt when brought to the brewery is first screened to remove dirt, dust and foreign particles; nails and other odds and ends of metal being caught on a bar magnet over which the malt passes. It is then crushed between rollers and, by an ingenious mechanical contrivance, is carried to large bins or hoppers situated above the mash tuns, the huge tubs in which the malt and hot (not boiling) water are mixed. This process is called mashing, and was formerly done by merely stirring water and malt together with a long oar or pole, a practice of course still followed by home brewers.
See, the welcome Brewhouse rise, See, the priest his duty plies! And, with apron duly bound, Stirs the liqour round and round. O’er the bubbling cauldron play Mirth and merriment so gay; Melancholy hides her head, The frowns of Envy, all are fled; Youthful Wit and Attic Salt Infuse their savour in the Malt.
Mashing is now carried on in various ways, machinery entirely taking the place of manual labour. Sometimes the water—always spoken of as “liquor” in a brewery—rises in the tun, and the malt comes in from {333} above, but in many breweries the malt and water run in together, a machine mixing them before they enter. When the malt-tea has stood long enough—huge revolving rakes mixing the mash meanwhile—the amber infusion (technically “wort”) is drawn off and more water added, until all the goodness has been extracted from the malt, the empty husks or “grains” only being left. With grains pigs and cows are often fed, and not brewers’ horses, as is popularly imagined.