Is variously composed, and differently prepared; what is here recommended will be found safe and effectual. Porter, or brown stout, when intended for draught, should never be sent out in the cask without fining and heading; the usual practice is to put your heading into your fining, and so both into the cask just before filling up and bunging down. The proportion for one hogshead of sixty-three gallons is three half pints of fining, with as much heading put into the fining as you can take up upon a cent piece; the heading here recommended is composed of equal parts of sal martus (or green copperas) and alum, both finely powdered and mixed in equal parts, so as to be intimately blended with each other before using. The advantages derivable from heading are merely apparent, giving a close frothy head to the beer in the quart or mug it is drawn in; supporting the vulgar prejudice, that such beer is better and stronger than that where no such appearance manifests itself.
This is a branch of trade, that, under proper management, might be made very productive and profitable, whereas, in the manner it is now generally conducted, proves a losing one, occasioned by the great breakage of bottles, arising from the impure state of the beer at the time of putting into bottle. In consequence of this bad management, I have known a person, extensive in the trade, to lose on an average from two to three dozen bottles, as well as beer, on every hogshead he put up which happened to lie over till summer, or was bottled in that season; this loss was too heavy to expect much profit from a business so conducted; to obviate both these consequences, I would recommend beer, ale, and porter, intended for the bottle, to be carefully filtered through charcoal and sand, as directed in the operation of filtering; being thus purified from all its feculencies and fermentable matter, it will be in the best possible state for taking the bottle, in that mild and gentle way that will not endanger the loss of one or the other. It will further have the good effect of recovering the beer or ale, thus filtered, from the flatness that will necessarily be induced by that operation, giving the liquor all the briskness and activity that can be wished for. If beer, porter, or ale, be intended for exportation to a warmer climate than our own, the operation will be found particularly suited to it. Choose your corks of the best quality, and steep them in pure strong spirit from the evening before you begin your bottling operation; this precaution is essentially necessary to all beer intended to be shipped, or sent off to a warmer climate than our own, such as the East and West Indies, South America, &c. In more temperate climes, the simple precaution of filtering alone will be found to answer every necessary purpose, without steeping the corks in spirits. But suppose you bottle for home consumption, in that case you will naturally wish to have your beer, ale, and porter, get up in the bottle in as short a space of time as possible, in that case you should pack away your bottles in dry straw in summer, in sawdust in winter, as your object at that season will naturally be rather to accelerate than retard fermentation; here you should carefully watch its progress from day to day, by drawing a bottle from the centre of the heap, as nearly as you can get at it; place this bottle between you and the light, and if you perceive a chain of small bubbles in the neck of the bottle, immediately under the cork, you may conclude your beer is up in the bottle, then draw a few more bottles, and if the same appearance continues in them also, it is time to draw all your bottles from the heap they were originally packed in, and set them on their bottoms in a square frame ten inches deep, size optional; fill up this frame with the bottles of porter, or ale, so drawn in a ripe state, then get one or more bushels of bay salt, and scatter it as evenly as you can over the bottles, until the space between their necks is nearly half filled; then another course of bottles may be sunk between these, with their necks down through the salt, so as to form an upper tier; thus treated, not a single bottle will be found to break from the force of fermentation, and the salt will answer for a fresh supply of bottles, as often as you may find it necessary to draw, or send them out, this quantity will answer your purpose for years, if you only keep it dry; another advantage, and no small one, derivable from a bottling operation conducted in this way, will be, that a loft will be found more convenient for the purpose than a ground floor, as less damp, and more likely to preserve the salt dry, which a more moist atmosphere would naturally dissolve. The practice here recommended may, with equal success, be applied to cider and perry.
[ Brewing Coppers, the best method of setting them. ]
This article, at a first view, may not appear to have much connexion with brewing, but, when attentively considered, it has a very material one, as also with economy, by saving nearly one half the fuel. It is a well-known fact in brewing, that the quicker and stronger the operation of boiling is performed, the better such beer will preserve, and the sooner it will become fine; although this opinion is combated by many, experience has proved it in my practice. I will suppose the copper you are about to set to contain two thousand gallons, the diameter of its bottom, five feet; let your fire blocks, if possible, be of soapstone, one for each side, and one for the end, of sufficient thickness and length, and full twelve inches deep, to the top of your sleepers; three courses of brick, sloped off from the top of the fire stone, with the usual quantity of mortar, and plastered over, will afford sufficient elevation for the fire to act on the bottom of the copper, leaving a space of about eighteen or twenty inches from the bottom to the top of the sleepers; the breadth of the fireplace need not exceed twenty-six inches. When the copper is about to be placed on the blocks, by swinging, or otherwise, three feet of the bottom of the copper should be on one side from the centre of the furnace, and but two feet on the other; I would have but one flue or entrance for the fire to round this copper, which flue should be placed on the three feet side, twenty-four inches long at the mouth; distance of the brick work from the copper, six inches, to narrow to five at the closing; the first closing to be three feet high on the side of the copper; the second closing, to be two feet above that, leaving twenty-one inches clear flue, allowing three inches for the thickness of the brick and mortar; the throat of the first flue, leading into the second; twenty-four inches distance of upper flue from the copper, five inches closing into four and a half inches at top. A short distance above the top of your copper should be placed an iron register to regulate the fire, so contrived as to be handily worked backward and forward by the brewer, or the man tending the fire, as circumstances may direct. The furnace door should be in two parts, one to hang on each side of the frame, and so lap over a small round hole, with a sliding shut to it, should be fixed in one of these doors, to admit the iron slicer to stir the fire. The clear of the furnace frame need not exceed sixteen inches high, by eighteen inches wide. A copper so set and proportioned, by being kept close covered at top, might be expected to boil cold water in one hour and fifteen minutes, perhaps in one hour, and that with a great saving of fuel compared with the same sized copper set in the ordinary way.
Freezing often retards the brewer's operations, and gives him considerable trouble and delay. To obviate these inconveniences, I would recommend having the rod of wood, instead of iron, so long as to work in a brass chamber, two feet above the lower box; if the pump be long, the rod may be made with joints of iron, and keys properly made, so as to have it in two, three, or four pieces, capable of being taken asunder; suppose the diameter of your chamber to be six inches, I would have the diameter of the rod five inches, which, being so much lighter than the column of water it displaces, will make the stroke comparatively light and easy to the horse, and not near so great a strain on the pump, delivering as much water or wort, it is expected, as will be found necessary for all the purposes of a brewery. But should it so happen, that any deficiency is found in the quantity of water and wort so delivered, it is only necessary to reduce the diameter of the wooden rod, from one quarter to half an inch more, and this will proportionably augment the quantity of water and wort delivered at each stroke. The water pumps, which in winter are exposed to the effects of the external air, should have a casing round them of boards from the level of the ground to half their height above it, which casing should be stuffed with dry hay, straw, or shavings, and well rammed; this casing should be water-tight round the pump, at the top, and a cock placed over it on one side of the pump, to let off the standing water; then stuff the mouth of the pump with hay or straw, and so treated the remaining water in the pump will never freeze in the coldest winter.