SECTION III.
OF EXTRACTION.
Fire impressed on malt, either through air or water, it is true, has similar effects as to preservation, but the fact is not the same as to taste: the sweet, the burnt flavor, or the proportion of both, the malt originally had, sensibly appear in the extracts; but water heated to excess will not, in extracting pale malt, communicate to the worts an empyreumatic taste; whether this proceeds from some acid parts, still residing in the heated waters, which might help the attenuated oils to tend towards a sweet, or from other reasons, is not easily determinable; certain it is, the foundation of taste in malt liquors is in the malt itself.
The basis of all wines is a sweet: this circumstance for brewing beers agreeable to the palate must always be attended to. Next to this, it is required that the liquor should possess all the strength, it can fittingly be made susceptible of. Pale malt, as it retains the whole virtue of the grain, yields the strongest beers. The finest oils being fittest for fermentation, malt dried by fierce heats, in a great measure loses these, and what remains are not only coarser oils, less miscible with water, but such as bring with them the impressed taste of fire.
To answer the purposes of taste, strength, and preservation, from what has been said it appears, that the extracting water must be of a heat superior to that which dried the malt; no other rule appears to direct in this, than to make choice of malt of such dryness, the delicacy of which has not been removed by fire, and such as will, at the same time, admit of a sufficient number of superior degrees of heat, to extract all its fermentable parts; that is (see page 124) malt whose dryness is nearly 19 degrees less than the mean of the drying and extracting heats applicable to the purpose intended.
As 119 degrees, the first heat forming pale malt, and at which it possesses the whole of its sweetness and virtues, may be said to be the lowest degree of dryness in the grain to form keeping beers with, so 138 degrees, above which the native whiteness of the grain is so subdued, as to remain but in a very small proportion, is the highest dried malt fit to be used for any purpose; from these premises the following table is formed, to shew the degree of dryness of malt, where taste and strength are equally consulted, to brew drinks capable of keeping themselves sound a long time, at any medium required.
The proper choice of malt I thought necessary to point out, previous to entering more at large on the subject of extraction. This table, it must be observed, is in no wise directive for brewing common small beer, soon to be expended, that liquor depending on many other circumstances, of which notice will be taken immediately under that head.
A TABLE, shewing the proper dryness of Malt, applicable to the mean of the drying and extracting heats under which keeping malt liquors should be formed.