SECTION II.
OF AIR.
None of the operations, either of nature or art, can be carried on without the action or assistance of air. It is a principal agent in fermentation; and therefore brewers ought to be well acquainted with its principal properties and powers.
By air we mean a fluid, scarcely perceptible to our senses, and discovering itself only by the resistance it makes to bodies. We find it every where incumbent on the surface of the globe, rising to a considerable height, and commonly known by the name of atmosphere. The weight of air is to that of water as 1 to 850, and its gravitating force equal to that of a column of water of 33 feet high; so that an area of one foot square receives, from air, a pressure equal to 2080 pounds weight.
Elasticity is a property belonging only to this element, and this quality varies in proportion to the compressing weights. We scarcely find this element, (any more than the others) in a pure state; one thousandth part of common air, says Boerhaave, consists of aqueous, spiritous, oily, saline, and other particles scattered through it.—These are not, or but little, compressible, and in general prevent fermentation: consequently, where the air is purest, fermentation is best carried on. The same author suspects, that the ultimate particles of air cohere together, so as not easily to insinuate themselves into the smallest pores, either of solids or fluids. Hence, those acquainted with brewing, easily account, why very hot water, which forces strong and pinguious particles from malt, forms at the same time extracts unfavourable for fermentation, as oils are an obstruction to the free entrance of air; and, from an analogous reason, extracts which are much less impressed with fire, in them fermentation is so much accelerated, that the whole soon becomes sour.
Air, like other bodies, is expanded and rarified by heat, and exerts its elasticity in proportion to the number of degrees of fire it has received; the hotter therefore the season is, the more active and violent will the fermentation be.
Air abounds with water, and is perpetually penetrating and insinuating itself into every thing capable of receiving it. Its weight, or gravitating force, must necessarily produce numberless effects. The water contained in the air is rendered more active by its motion; hence the saline, gummous, and saponaceous particles it meets with are loosened in their texture, and, in some degree, dissolved. As principles similar to these are the chief constituent parts of malt, the reason is obvious why such, which are old, or have lain a proper time exposed to the influence of the air, dissolve more readily, or, in other words, yield a more copious extract than others.
All bodies in a passive state, remaining a sufficient time in the same place, become of the same degree of heat with the air itself. On this account the water, lying in the backs used by brewers, is nearly of the same degree of heat as the thermometer shews the open air in the shade to be. When this instrument indicates a cold below the freezing point, or 32 degrees, if the water does not then become ice, the reason is, because it has not been exposed long enough to be thoroughly affected by such a cold. For water does not immediately assume the same degree of temperature with the air, principally on account of its density, also from its being pumped out of deep and hot wells, from its being kept in motion, and from many other incidents. Under these circumstances, no great error can arise to estimate its heat equal to 35 degrees.
Air is not easily expelled from bodies, either solid or fluid. Water requires two hours boiling to be discharged of the greatest part of its air. That it may be thus expelled by heat appears from hence; water, if boiled the space abovementioned, instead of having any air bubbles when it is froze, as ice commonly has, becomes a solid mass like crystal.