The American Practical Brewer and Tanner
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Joseph Coppinger >> The American Practical Brewer and Tanner
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When you wish to filter by ascent, you introduce the liquor to be
filtered between the two bottoms. As the fountain which supplies this
liquor is higher than the filtering vessel, it will naturally force its
way through the false bottom, filtering medium, &c., until it runs off
pure at spout F into the receiver G. Those persons who live on the
banks, or in the vicinity of our great rivers, such as the Missouri,
Ohio, Mississippi, &c., may purify their drinking water in this way,
with great advantage to their health, and consequent increase of
comfort to themselves and families. It is also well adapted to the use
of those who navigate these waters, particularly such as proceed in
steam-boats, where convenient room can be always found for such useful
and salutary purposes, and to them I strongly recommend its use. It may
also be advantageously applied to filtering rain water, which, to some
constitutions, may be more congenial than either spring or river water.
_Returned Beer, to make the most of, and double its value._
Suppose, for example, you have one hundred and fifty barrels of this
beer, (or in that proportion, adjust your mixing ingredients
accordingly,) put the whole into one vat that it will fill; then take
half a barrel of colouring, twenty-eight pounds cream of tartar,
twenty-eight pounds of ground alum, one pound of salt of steel,
otherwise called green copperas, with two barrels of strong finings;
mix these ingredients well together, put them into your vat, and rouse
well; after which, let the vat remain open for three days; then shut
down the scuttle close, and sand it over; in one fortnight it will be
fit for use; your own good sense will then direct its application.
_To bring several sorts of Beer which have been mixed to one uniform
taste._
EXAMPLE.
Suppose you have one hundred barrels of this description in your vat;
take six pounds of porter extract, six pounds of orange peel, ground,
one pound of heading, composed of half a pound of alum, with half a
pound of green copperas mixed, six pounds of Indian bark; mix these
ingredients with one butt of finings, rouse your vat well, let it
remain open three days, then close down your vat, and sand it over; it
will be fit in one fortnight to use.
_Finings, the best method of preparing them._
A very important object indeed, is finings in the management of porter
and brown beers, and sometimes the paler kinds need their agency before
they will become transparently fine: without this quality no beer can
be acceptable to the consumer, and should be always a particular aim of
the brewers to obtain. Take five pounds of isinglass, beat each piece
in succession on a stone or iron weight, until you find you can
conveniently shred it into small pieces, and so treat every piece until
you have got through the whole; thus shredded, steep it in sour porter
or strong beer that is very fine, then set the beer and the isinglass
on the fire, and there let it remain till you raise the heat to one
hundred and ninety, but no higher, keeping it, while on the fire,
constantly stirring; then have your hogshead of clear beer ready,
strain your dissolved isinglass through a hair sieve into it, which you
must take care to mix well; thus assimilated it will be fit for use in
twelve hours.
It is worth remarking, that at the time of sending out porter or brown
beer to your customers is the time to put in both your fining and
heading, the jolting it then gets in the carriage will assist its
fining more effectually, after it has rested a few days in the
customer's cellar.
_Heading._
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.
_Bottling Beer._
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.
_Pumps, the best and most economical construction, also the most
effectual, and least liable to fail or get out of order; how best
treated in cold weather to prevent freezing, or when frozen to remove
the inconvenience._
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.
But where these precautions have not been taken, and the charge in your
pump becomes frozen, and you wish to clear it, get one quart of bay
salt, throw it into your pump, stop the mouth of it at the top, and in
the course of a few hours the salt will have dissolved the ice in your
pump, and you may go to work; this is much more effectual and less
troublesome than using hot water, which must be repeated in great
quantities before it will produce its effect.
_Cleansing Casks._
Trifling and simple as this operation may appear, it is still one that
is highly important to the brewer, and requires minute and constant
attention. Burning and steaming casks seems to be two most effectual
modes of accomplishing this important object. If your casks have been
long in use, and thereby contracted any musty or bad smell, the best
way is to open them; wash them well out with boiling water; set them to
dry, and then fire them, after which, they may be washed out again with
hot water, and, when dry, headed for use; every cask after emptying,
that is not perfectly sweet, should be treated in this way,
particularly when intended for stock or keeping beer. New casks that
have never been used, are best prepared by steaming them, and a small
boiler, containing from sixty to one hundred gallons will be best
suited to this purpose. If you have tin pipes communicating from one
cask to another, you can steam four or five at a time, and the work
goes on expeditiously. Fresh emptied small beer, and single-ale casks,
can be sufficiently cleansed by chaining them; after which, rincing
them out with hot water will be found a sufficient cleansing for such
casks, as they are generally but a short time on draught. The operation
of chaining casks is performed by putting into them, with boiling
water, a small iron chain, two or three yards long, and then tossing
your cask several times round and round so as to get the chain to rub,
and act upon every part of the inside head, &c., this will take off the
yest, &c. The smoother and evener all brewers' casks are made on their
inside the better, as they are thereby the more easily cleaned. Every
brewer should be particular in recommending to his customers carefully
to cork up every cask as drawn off--by this simple precaution they will
be preserved sweet for months, while the neglect of it will cause them
to get foul in a short time, to the great increase of trouble and
expense to the brewer before he can sufficiently purify them. It is
also a necessary precaution to keep casks, when brought home, from the
action of the sun and weather, by placing them under proper sheds;
where casks are supposed to occupy one fifth of the brewer's active
capital, they should at all times be carefully looked after.
_The following processes are given principally for the use of gentlemen
farmers, housekeepers, and others, who may occasionally wish, as well as
find their account, in brewing their Mead or Metheglin._
THE PROCESS.
For every pipe of mead allow one hundred and sixty-eight pounds of
honey. On a small scale, take ten gallons of water, two gallons of
honey, with a handful of raced ginger, and two lemons, cut them in
slices, and put them, with the honey and ginger, into the water, boil
for half an hour, carefully skimming all the time; use a strong
ferment, and attenuate high, not under seventy-eight; in the boiling
add two ounces of hops to the above ten gallons of water and two
gallons of honey. In about three weeks, or one month, after cleansing
and working off, this mead will be fit to bottle. This liquor, when
thus made, is wholesome and pleasant, and little, if any, inferior to
the best white wines. It is particularly grateful in summer, when drank
mixed with water.
_Ginger Wine._
Take sixteen quarts of water, boil it, add one pound of bruised ginger,
infuse it in the water for forty-eight hours, placed in a cask in some
warm situation; after which time strain off this liquor, add to it
eight pounds of lump sugar, seven quarts of brandy, the juice of twelve
lemons, and the rinds of as many Seville oranges; cut them, steep the
fruit, and the rinds of the oranges, for twelve hours in the brandy,
strain your brandy, add it to your other ingredients, bung up your
cask, and in three or four weeks it will be fine; if it should not, a
little dissolved isinglass will soon make it so.
_Currant Wine._
Take five gallons of currant juice, and put it into a ten gallon cask,
with twenty pounds of Havanna, or lump sugar, fill the cask with water,
let it ferment, with the bung out, for some days; as it wastes fill up
with water; when done working, bung down; and in two or three months
after it will be fit for use: two quarts of French brandy added, after
the fermentation ceases, would improve the liquor, and communicate to
it a preserving quality. Wine may be made from strawberries,
raspberries, and cherries in the same way.
_Yest, how prepared, so as to preserve sweet and good in any
climate._
This operation, I apprehend, however simple it may appear, will have
very important consequences, whether we consider it as a medicine (and
in putrid fevers there is, perhaps, no better known) or a ferment. It
will be well worth the attention of the physician, the brewer, the
distiller, the merchant, and the housekeeper, whether resident in the
temperate, or in the torrid zone.
Mr. Felton Mathew, merchant in London, obtained a patent for the
above-mentioned object, which may be found in the Repertory of Arts,
vol. V. page 73. Mr. Mathew used a press with a lever, the bottom made
with stout deal or oak timber, fit for the purpose, raised with strong
feet a convenient distance from the ground, so as to admit the beer to
run off into whatever is prepared to receive it; into the back of it is
let a strong piece of timber, or any other fit material, to secure one
end of the lever, the top of which should work on an iron bolt or pin;
when the lever is thus prepared, get your yest into hair-cloth bags,
or, if not conveniently had, into coarse canvas bags; when filled, tie
them securely at the mouth, and place one bag at a time in a trough of
a proper size with a false bottom full of holes, on this bottom should
be placed an oblong perforated shape, about the form of a brick mould;
in this oblong shape or box, without either bottom or top, is placed
the bag containing the yest, on which the press is let down, and
gradually forced, as the beer exudes, or gradually runs off; when no
more liquid runs from the shape, the press is taken off, and the bag
opened, its contents taken out, which will crumble to pieces; in this
state it should be thinly spread on canvass, previously stretched in
frames, which will permit the heated air of the kiln to pass through it
in all directions, and thus gradually finish the process to perfect
dryness, which will be completely effected by ninety degrees of heat:
at the commencement of the drying, it would be proper to pass the edge
of a board over each frame, in order to reduce the lumps of yest, and
thereby make them as small as possible. When completely dry, put it
into tight casks or bottles so as to exclude air and moisture: thus
secured, it will preserve good as long as wanted in any climate, and be
found a valuable article of domestic economy, as well as medicine. When
to be used, the necessary quantity should be dissolved in a little warm
water, at the temperature of from eighty to ninety degrees of heat,
with the addition of a proportionate quantity of sugar; the addition of
sugar is only recommended when used to raise bread, but not when given
as medicine; in the opinions of several intelligent men, this is
considered the simplest and most effectual method of preserving yest,
and, as such, is hereby strongly recommended.
_To make a substitute for Brewer's Yest._
Take six pounds of ground malt, and three gallons of boiling water,
mash them together well, cover the mixture, and let it stand three
hours, then draw off the liquor, and put two pounds of brown sugar to
each gallon, stirring it well till the sugar is dissolved, then put it
in a cask just large enough to contain it, covering the bung hole with
brown paper; keep this cask in a temperature of ninety-eight degrees.
Prepare the same quantity of malt and boiling water as before, but
without sugar, then mix all together, and add one quart of yest; let
your cask stand open for forty-eight hours, and it will be fit for use.
The quart of yest should not be added to these two extracts at a higher
heat than eighty degrees.
_Another method to make twenty-six gallons of the substitute._
Put twenty-six ounces of hops to as many gallons of water, boil it for
two hours, or until you reduce the liquor to sixteen gallons; add malt
and sugar in the proportion before mentioned, and mash your malt at the
heat of one hundred and ninety degrees; let it stand two hours and a
half, then strain it off, and add to the malt ten gallons more of water
at the same degree of heat, and mash a second time; let it stand two
hours, then strain it off as before; when your first mash is blood
heat, or ninety-eight, put to it one gallon of the preceding
substitute, mix it well, and let it stand ten hours; then take the
produce of the second mash, and add it, at ninety-eight, to the rest,
mix it well, and let it stand six hours, it will be then fit for use in
the same manner, and for the same purposes as brewer's yest is applied;
the advantages alleged in favour of this method are, that it will keep
sweet and good longer than brewer's yest, and in any reason or
temperature be fit for use.
_Brewer's Yest._
May be generated in the following way: Take one pound of leaven, made
with wheaten flour, such as the French generally use to raise their
bread, dilute the pound of leaven with water or wort, the latter to
choose at ninety degrees of heat, add it to your wort at the heat of
sixty-five, supposing your barrel to be filled with wort at this heat;
then add your leaven, diluted as mentioned, until your cask be full; to
effect which, with less waste and more certainty, it may be better to
put into your barrel the diluted leaven first, then fill up with wort
at the temperature mentioned; after a day or two the beer will begin to
work out yest, and will serve as a ferment for another brewing; thus,
after three or four brewings, your yest will become so improved that it
will be nearly equal to any brewer's yest, and the experiment in
certain situations is well worth trying, when a proper ferment is
wanted and cannot be otherwise procured.
_Process for making and preparing Claret Wine for shipping; without
which preparation such wines are considered unfit for exportation,
being in its natural state about the strength of our common Cider._
Claret wine, before the French revolution, was the staple article of
export from the great commercial City of Bordeaux, to every part of
Europe. And, it may be presumed, will soon again reassume its wanted
importance. The vintage generally begins, for making this sort of wine,
about the middle or latter end of September, and is generally finished
in all the month of October. The mode by which the juice is expressed
from the grape, is by the workmen trampling them with their bare feet in
a large reservoir or cooler, (not the cleanest operation in the world,)
which has an inclination to the point where the spout or spouts are
placed for taking off the expressed juice, which is conveyed to large
open vats, that are thus filled with this juice to within ten or twelve
inches of the upper edge; this space is left to make room for the
fermentation, which spontaneously takes place in this liquor. After the
first fermentation is over, and the wine begins to purify itself, which
is ascertained by means of a small cock placed in the side of the vat,
and takes place generally by the middle of February, or beginning of
March, in the following year; it is then racked off into hogsheads,
carefully cleansed, and a match of sulphur burned in each cask before
filling; when thus racked off, it is bunged up, and immediately bought
up by brokers for the Bordeaux merchants, and here it is made to undergo
the second or finishing fermentation, in the following manner: It may be
proper here to remark, that claret wine is generally divided into three
growths, first, second, and third; the first growths, namely, Latour,
Lafeet, and Chateaux Margo, are uniformly rented for a term of years, at
a given price, to English merchants, through whom, or their agents
_only_ is there a possibility of procuring any portion of this wine. The
second growths are shipped to the different markets of Europe, North and
South America; and the third growth principally to Holland and Hamburgh.
In order to strengthen the natural body of claret wine, and to render it
capable of bearing the transition of the sea, the first and second
growths are allowed from ten to fifteen gallons of good Alicant wine to
every hogshead, with one quart of stum.[8] The casks are then filled up
and bunged down. They are then ranged three tier high from one end of
the cellar to the other, each tier about eighteen inches, with two
stanchions of stout pine plank, firmly placed between the heads of each
hogshead, from one end of the cellar to the other, until they have
reached, and are supported by, the end walls of the building. This
precaution is necessary to guard against the force of fermentation,
which is often so strong as to burst out the heads of the hogsheads,
notwithstanding the precautions taken to secure them in the situation
during the summer heats. The wine cooper, who has the charge of these
wines, regularly visits them twice a day, morning and evening, in order
to see the condition of the casks, and when he finds the fermentation
too strong, he gives vent, and thus prevents the bursting of the casks.
The third, or inferior growth, is exactly treated in same way, with the
single exception of having Benicarlo wine substituted for Alicant in
preparing them for their second fermentation, as cheaper and better
suited to their quality; both these wines are of Spanish growth, and
brought to Bordeaux by the canal of Languedoc: they are naturally of a
much stronger body than native claret. Thus mixed and fermented, the
claret becomes fortified, and rendered capable of bearing the transition
of seas and climates. About the latter end of September, or beginning of
October, the fermentation of these wines begins to slacken, and they
gradually become fine; in this state they are racked off into fresh
hogsheads carefully cleansed, and a match of sulphur burned in each
before filling. After this operation, they are suffered to remain
undisturbed (save that they are occasionally ullaged,) till about to be
shipped, when they are racked off a second time, and fined down with the
white of ten eggs to each hogshead; these whites are well beat up
together with a small handful of white salt; after this fining, when
rested, the hogsheads are filled up again with pure wine, and then
carefully bunged down with wooden bungs, surrounded with clean linen to
prevent leaking; in this state the wines are immediately shipped. Here
it may be proper to state, that the lees that remain on the different
hogsheads that have been racked off, are collected and put into pipes of
one hundred and forty, or one hundred and fifty gallons each, and this
lee wine, as it is termed, is fined down again with a proportionate
number of eggs and salt. After which, it is generally shipped off as
third growth, or used at table mixed with water. If at any time
hereafter the method herein given of making and preparing claret wine
for shipping, as practised in Bordeaux and its neighbourhood, should
be applied to the red wines of this country, particularly those of
Kaskaskias; it may be proper here to give a description of the mode in
which these wines are racked, which will be found simple, effectual, and
expeditious; I mean for the lower or ground tiers. The upper, or more
elevated ones, rack themselves, without coercion of any kind. When you
are about to rack a hogshead of wine upon the ground tier, you place
your empty hogshead close to the full one, in which you then put your
brass racking cock; on the nozzle of which cock you tie on a leather
hose, which is generally from three to four feet long; on the other
end of this hose is a brass pipe, the size of the tap hole, with a
projecting shoulder towards the hose to facilitate knocking in this pipe
into the empty hogshead, which is then removed a sufficient distance
from the full hogshead in order to stretch the hose, now communicating
with both. The cock is then turned, and the wine soon finds its level in
the empty hogshead; then a large sized bellows, with an angular nozzle,
and sharp iron feet towards the handle, which feet are forced down into
the hoops of the cask on which it rests, in order to keep this bellows
stationary, whilst the nozzle is hammered in tight at the bung hole of
the racking hogshead; the bellows is then worked by one man, and in
about five minutes the racking of the hogshead is completed. The
pressure of the air introduced into the hogshead, by the bellows, acts
so forcibly on the surface of the liquor, that it requires but a few
minutes to finish the operation; when the cock is stopped, the hose
taken off, and a new operation commences. This mode may possibly, in
some cases, be advantageously applied to racking off beer, ale, and
cider.
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