To make good beer requires good materials, care, cleanliness, and method. Given those, failure should be impossible. The water should be good, soft water being usually to be preferred; the malt fresh and full of flour; the hops bright, yellowish-green in colour, with a pleasant brisk fragrance, and free from leaves and bits of stem; and the various tubs, boilers, and other appliances scrupulously clean. The several temperatures should be taken with a proper thermometer, and not guessed, as that way many disasters lie.
BARNETT AND FOSTER’S SPILE-DRAWER.
Spring and autumn are the seasons most suited for brewing, as at other times it is difficult to keep the temperature within the proper limits. Four bushels of ground or bruised malt are placed in a wooden “mash tun,” and twenty-two gallons of water at a temperature of 170° F. are added thereto. This is well stirred for half an hour, and then another eighteen gallons of water at 170° F. are added, and the stirring is continued for half an hour longer. Cover the mash tun for a couple of hours, and then draw off the infusion or wort through a hole in the bottom, protected by a strainer, so that the malt itself remains behind in the mash tun. Next add to the malt thirty gallons of water at 185° F. Stir for half an hour, let it stand for an hour, and then draw off as before. Next add eighteen gallons of water at 200° F. to the malt, stir for ten minutes, and draw off half an hour later. The three washings may be all mixed together if a good ale of average strength is desired, or the third washing may be separately treated so as to make a light table ale, or they may be all three separately treated so as to form three ales varying from very strong to very light, the former having considerable keeping quality. In any case, it is imperative that the minimum of time be lost in transferring the wort to the copper. It should be boiled for an hour and a half, and the hops (varying from one pound in the case of a mild table ale to six or seven pounds in the case of very bitter ales, three pounds being a good average amount) added, the boiling being continued for half an hour longer. The wort is then passed through a strainer into large, shallow tubs to cool, the depth of liquid not exceeding four inches. It is next poured into fermenting tuns (casks with one head removed do nicely), which must not be more than half-filled. The yeast (at the rate of a pint to the barrel of thirty-six gallons of wort) is to be mixed with a little of the wort which has been heated to 85° F. As soon as this portion shows signs of general permeation by the process of fermentation it is to be added to the main body of wort, which is to be at a temperature of 60° F. Stir it well, and then allow it to stand. As soon as a yeasty appearance is noticed in the head which rises to the surface, skim it off every two days until no more yeast appears—usually a week or more from the start. Then draw off the clear ale into casks, filling them completely, bung them securely, and place them in a cool cellar. It may then be kept for from one to twelve months, or longer, according to its quality and strength. Ale or beer should be tapped a week before it is required to draw any from the cask in order that it may have time to settle.
Finally, the ale-wife may be referred to the appeal of Dr. King—
“O Girzy, Girzy! when thou go’st to brew,
Consider well what you’re about to do;
Be very wise, very sedately think,
That what you’re going now to make is drink.
Consider who must drink that drink, and then