[ Indian Corn Malt, a valuable auxiliary to Brewing materials. ]
This species of grain well managed, and made into malt, will be found alike useful to the brewer and distiller, but it is peculiarly adapted to the brewing of porter; further, it is known to possess more saccharine matter than any other grain used in either brewing or distilling, joined to the advantage of not interfering with the season for malting barley, as this should commence when the former ceases. The summer months are the fittest for malting this kind of grain, and can be only very defectively made at any other season, as it requires a high temperature to force germination, and cause it to give out all its sweet. The following process, it is expected, will be found to answer every purpose wished for: suppose your steep to contain sixty bushels, after you have levelled it off, let on your water as directed in malting barley; you should give fresh water to your steep at the end of twenty-four hours. If it is southern corn you are malting, it will require to remain in steep seventy-two hours in the whole; if it be northern corn, it will require ninety-six hours, there being a considerable difference in the density of these two kinds of grain; the hardest, of course, requires the most water; and, in all cases, the fresher Indian corn is from the cob the better it will malt. When you have accomplished the necessary time in your steep, you let off your water; and, when sufficiently drained, let it down in your couch frame, where it will require turning once in twelve hours, in order to keep it of equal temperature; the depth of the grain should be about two feet and a half in the frame; as it begins to germinate and grow, open your frame, and thin it down at every turning, until you reduce its thickness to six or seven inches; thus extending it on your lower floor, turning it more frequently, as the growth is rapid. The vegetation of the grain, together with the turning, will by this time make the watering pot necessary; the criterion by which you will judge of its fitness for the water, is as soon as you perceive the root or acrospire begins to wither. Two thirds of your water is to be distributed over the surface of your couch for the first watering, which will require thirty-two gallons, and when turned back again, sixteen gallons for the second watering, making in the whole forty-eight gallons of water to sixty bushels of corn. This water should be put on with a gardener's watering pot, as equally as possible. Supposing this pot to contain four gallons, it will make eight pots for the first watering, and four for the second. In this stage of the operation the turnings on the floor should be very frequent, in order to keep the grain cool, as the heat of the weather, at this season, will be sufficient to promote and perfect the vegetation. The second day after the first watering, if the blade is not sufficiently grown, water again, but in less quantity, say one half. It will be now four or five days more before the couch is ready for the kiln, which will be ascertained by the blade becoming the full length of the corn. After this it should be thrown on the upper floor, and suffered to wither for a couple of days, turning it frequently; by this time the blade will have a yellow appearance, the grain will become tender, and, if tasted, be found uncommonly sweet; in this state it may be committed to the kiln, and dried in the usual way.
N. B. It will generally take ten days after it is out of the steep to perfect the malting of southern corn, and twelve days for northern.
Notwithstanding that progress of improvement in the doctrine of fermentation has, in the last twenty years, far surpassed any thing in the same period that preceded it, we have still much to learn. Fermentation is the instrument or means which nature employs in the decomposition of vegetable and animal bodies, or reduction of them to their original elements, or first principles. Fermentation is, therefore, a spontaneous separation of the component parts of these bodies, and is one of those processes that is conducted by nature for their resolution, and the combination and fermentation of other bodies out of them; therefore, it is one of these operations in which nature is continually present, and going on before our eyes; this may be one reason that a very critical observance of it has escaped our attention. Fermentation brings us acquainted with this unerring axiom; that nothing in nature is lost; or that matter, of which all things are composed, is indestructible. For instance, the vinous process of fermentation, succeeded by distillation, produces ardent spirits, or alcohol, the elements of which are here described. If we pass this alcohol, or spirits of wine, through a glass, porcelain, or metallic tube, heated right hot, provided with a suitable condenser and apparatus to separate and contain the parts or products, it will be decomposed and resolved into its primitive elements, carbonic acid gas, or fixed air, and hydrogen gas, or inflammable air; the oxygen being decomposed and united with the oxygen, or vital air, into carbonic acid gas; the water of the spirit of wine being also decomposed, or resolved into its first principles as herein is stated, forms a part of the produce before mentioned.
Hence spontaneous fermentation, vinous, acetous, and putrefactive, is the natural decomposition of animal and vegetable matters, to which a certain degree of fluidity is necessary; for where vegetable and animal substances are dry, as sugar and glue for instance, and are kept so, no fermentation of any kind succeeds.
There can be no doubt that spontaneous fermentation first taught mankind the means of procuring wine and other agreeable beverage; observation and industry the means of making spirit and vinegar, the first of which is evidently the produce of art, combined with the operations of nature.
With nature for our guide, and our own ingenuity, fermentation has been made subservient to the various products we now obtain from saccharine and fermentable matters, such as sugar, molasses, grain, with which we have made wine, spirits, bread, beer, malt, &c.; which last has much facilitated our practice in fermentation, but proved the tide-ending, or point of stagnation to its further improvement. Relying too much on malted grain in the operation of fermentation, we are presented with some of the most pleasing and instructive phenomena of nature; the resolutions and combinations that are formed during the process of the vinous and acetous stages of fermentation, are interesting, beyond comparison, to the brewer, malt and molasses distillers, vintager, cider and vinegar maker, &c. The elastic fluids and volatile principles that are extricated and escape, formerly so little attended to, are now better understood. The method of commodiously saving, and advantageously applying them, and other volatile products, to the improvement of the fermenting and other fluids, will, I hope, not only form a new era in the progress of fermenting, brewing, distilling, &c. but a new source of profit, that may, in time, lead to a recomposition of those elements from which they were produced, or, at least, the fermentation of vinous fluids, vinegar, spirit, &c. by resorting to an inexhaustible source supplied by nature, of these important materials, and their application to the uses that may be made of that abundance so easily procurable, and at present so unprofitably wasted. But to continue our views to the business immediately before us, let us begin with the several products, by stating that carbonic acid gas, or fixed air, is copiously extracted from fluids in a state of vinous fermentation, and sundry mineral and vegetable substances, easily procurable, for which we have the testimony of our own senses; the same may be said of hydrogen gas, oxygen gas, &c. Presuming these positions granted, let us make a short inquiry into the composition of vinous fluids, &c. Apprehending there are but few people to whom these observations will be useful, but what will allow that all vinous fluids, whether intended for beer, wine, cider, &c. are the produce of saccharine matter, or fermentable matter obtained from the sugar cane, grain, fruit, &c. and the part which art at present takes in this beautiful process of nature, is to facilitate her operations in proportion to observation and experience, in conformity to the object in view, in making wine, beer, cider, spirit, &c.; or, subsequent to the vinous, to forward the progress of the acetous fermentation for the production of vinegar. The saccharine or fermentable matter of vegetables, consists in what is chemically called hydrogen gas, or inflammable air; carbonic acid gas, or fixed air; oxygen gas, or vital air; which last forms nearly one third part of the whole atmosphere, circumvolving our globe in which we breathe; or, more exactly, thirty-seven parts of oxygen, and seventy-three of azotic gas, are the component parts of our atmosphere, except the small proportion of undecomposed carbonic acid gas there may be found in it.