Ale
not exceed 155° or 160°. The quantity of water should be poured on the malt as speedily as possible, and the whole being well mixed together by active stirring, the vessel should be closely covered over for an hour; if the weather be cold, for an hour and a half. If hard water be employed it should be boiled, and the temperature allowed, by exposure to the atmosphere, to fall to 155° or 160°; but if rain water is used, it may be added to the malt as soon as it arrives to 155°. During the time this process is going on, the hops should be infused in a close vessel, in as much boiling water as will cover them, for 2 hours. The liquor may then be squeezed out, and kept closely covered.
The hops should then be boiled for about 10 minutes, in double the quantity of water obtained from the infused hops, and the strained liquor, when cold, may be added with the infusion to the wort, when it has fallen to the temperature of 70°.
The object of infusing the hops in a close vessel previously to boiling, is to preserve the essential oil of hops, which renders it more sound, and at the same time more wholesome. A pint of good thick yeast should be well stirred into the mixture of wort and hops, and covered over in a place of the temperature of 65°; and when the fermentation is completed, the liquor may be drawn off into a clean cask previously rinsed with boiling water. When the slow fermentation which will ensue has ceased, the cask should be loosely bunged for two days, when, if the liquor be left quiet, the bung may be properly fastened. The pale malt is the best, because, when highly dried, it does not afford so much saccharine matter. If the malt be new, it should be exposed to the air, in a dry room, for 2 days previously to its being used; but if it be old, it may be used in 12 or 20 hours after it is ground. The great difference in the flavor of ale made by different brewers appears to arise from their employing different species of hops.
Another Method of Brewing Ale.
For 36 gallons, take of malt (usually pale), 2 bushels; sugar, 3 lbs. just boiled to a color; hops, 2 lbs. 8 oz.; coriander seeds, 1 oz.; capsicum, a drachm.
Work it 2 or 3 days, beating it well up once or twice a day; when it begins to fall, cleanse it by adding a handful of salt and some wheat ff ur.
Table Beer only, from Pale Malt.
The first mash should be at 170°, viz. 2 barrels per quarter; let it stand on the grains of an hour in hot weather, or 1 hour if cold. Second mash, 145° at 1½ barrels per quarter, stands an hour. Third, 165°, 2 barrels per quarter, stands an hour. Fourth, 130°, 3 barrels, stands 2 hours. The first wort to be boiled with 6 lbs. of hops per quarter for 1½ hours, the second wort to be boiled with the same hops 2 hours, and the remainder 3 hours. The whole is to be now heated as low as 55° if the weather permits, and put to work with about 5 pints of yeast per quarter; if the weather is too warm to get them down to 55°, a less proportion will be sufficient. The 8 barrels of liquor first used will be reduced to 6 of beer to each quarter; 1 barrel being left in the grains, and another evaporated in boiling, cooling and working.
Ale and Small Beer on Mr. Cobbett's Plan.
Utensils.
These are first, a copper that will contain at least 40 gallons. Second, a mashing-tub to contain 60 gallons; for the malt is to be in this along with the water. It must be a little broader at top than at bottom, and not quite so deep as it is wide across the bottom. In the middle of the bottom there is a hole about 2 inches over, to draw the wort off. Into this hole goes a stick a foot or two longer than the tub is high. This stick is to be about 2 inches through, and tapered for about 8 inches upwards, at the end that goes into the hole, which at last it fills up as closely as a cork. Before anything else is put into the tub, lay a little bundle of fine birch about half the bulk of a birch broom, and well tied at both ends. This being laid over the hole (to keep back the grains as the wort goes out), put the tapered end of the stick down through it into the hole, and thus cork the whole up. Then have something of weight sufficient to keep the birch steady at the bottom of the tub, with a hole through it to slip down the stick; the best thing for this purpose will be a leaden collar for the stick, with the hole large enough, and it should weigh 3 or 4 pounds.
Third, an underback or shallow tub, to go under the mash-tub for the wort to run into when drawn from the grains.
Fourth, a tun-tub that will contain 30 gallons, to put the ale into to work, the mash-tub serving as a tun-tub for the small beer. Besides these, a couple of coolers or shallow tubs, about a foot deep; or, if there are four it may be as well, in order to effect the cooling more quickly.
Process of Brewing the Ale.
Begin by filling the copper with water, and next by making the water boil. Then put into the mashing-tub water sufficient to stir and separate the malt. The degree of heat that the water is to be at, before the malt is put in, is 170° by the thermometer; but, without one, take this rule: when you can, looking down into the tub, see your face clearly in the water, the water is hot enough.
Now put in the malt and stir it well in the water.
In this state it should continue for about of an hour. In the meanwhile fill up the copper, and make it boil; and then put in boiling water sufficient to give 18 gallons of ale. When the proper quantity of water is in stir the malt again well, and cover the mashing-tub over with sacks, and there let the mash stand for 2 hours; then draw off the wort. The mashing-tub is placed on a couple of stools, so as to be able to put the underback under it to receive the wort as it comes out of the hole. When the underback is put in its place, let out the wort by pulling up the stick that corks the hole. But observe, this stick (which goes 6 or 8 inches through the hole) must be raised by degrees, and the wort must be let out slowly in order to keep back the sediment. So that it is necessary to have something to keep the stick up at the point where it is to be raised, and fixed at for the time. To do this the simplest thing is a stick across the mashing-tub.
As the ale-wort is drawn off into the small underback, lade it out of that into the tun-tub; put the wort into the copper, and add 14 pounds of good hops, well rubbed and separated as they are put in. Now make the copper boil, and keep it, with the lid off, at a good brisk boil for a full hour, or an hour and a half. When the boiling is done, put the liquor into the coolers, but strain out the hops in a small clothes-basket or wickerbasket. Now set the coolers in the most convenient place, in doors or out of doors, as most convenient. The next stage is the tun-tub, where the liquor is set to work. A great point is, the degree of heat that the liquor is to be at, when it is set to work. The proper heat is 70°; so that a thermometer makes the matter sure. In the country they determine the degree of heat by merely put ting a finger into the liquor.
When cooled to the proper heat, put it into the tun-tub, and put in about half a pint of good yeast. But the yeast should first be put into half a gallon of the liquor, and mixed well; stirring in with the yeast a handful of wheat or rye-flour. This mixture is then to be poured out clean into the tuntub, and the mass of the liquor agitated well, till the yeast be well mixed with the whole. When the liquor is thus properly put into the tun-tub and set a working, cover over the top, by laying a sack or two across it.
The tun-tub should stand in a place neither too warm nor too cold. Any cool place in summer, and any warm place in winter, and if the weather be very cold, some cloths or sacks should be put round the tun-tub while the beer is working. In about 6 or 8 hours a frothy head will rise upon the liquor; and it will keep rising, more or less slowly, for 48 hours. The best way is to take off the froth, at the end of about 24 hours, with a common skimmer, and in 12 hours take it off again, and so on, till the liquor has done working, and sends up no more yeast. Then it is beer; and, when it is quite cold (for ale or strong beer), put it into the cask by means of a funnel. It must be cold before this is done, or it will be foxed; that is, have a rank and disagreeable taste.
The cask should lean a little on one side when flling it, because the beer will work again, and send more yeast out of the bung hole. Something will go off in this working, which may continue for 2 or 3 days, so that when the beer is being put in the cask, a gallon or two should be left, to keep filling up with as the working produces emptiness.
At last when the working is completely over, block the cask up to its level. Put in a handful of fresh hops, fill the cask quite full, and bung it tight, with a bit of coarse linen round the bung.
When the cask is empty, great care must be taken to cork it tightly up, so that no air gets in; for, if so, the cask is moulded and spoilt for ever. The Small Beer.
Thirty-six gallons of boiling water are to go into the mashing-tub; the grains are to be well stirred up, as before; the mashing-tub is to be covered over, and the mash is to stand in that state for an hour; then draw it off into the tun-tub.
By this time the copper will be empty again, by putting the ale liquor to cool. Now put the small beer wort into the copper with the hops used beore, and with half a pound of fresh hops added o them; and boil this liquor briskly for an hour.
Take the grains and the sediment clean out of the mashing-tub, put the birch twigs in again, and put down the stick as before. Put the basket over, and take the liquor from the copper (putting the fire out first) and pour it into the mashing-tub through the basket. Take the basket away, throw the hops on the dunghill, and leave the small beer liquor to cool in the mashing-tub.
Here it is to remain to be set to working; only, more yeast will be wanted in proportion; and there should be for 36 galls. of small beer, 3 half pints of good yeast.
Proceed now as with the ale, only, in the case of the small beer it should be put into cask, not quite cold; or else it will not work in the barrel, as it ought to do. It will not work so strongly nor so long as ale; and may be put in the barrel much sooner, in general the next day after it is brewed.
All the utensils should be well cleaned and put away as soon as they are done with. "I am now," says Mr. Cobbet, "in a farm house, where the same set of utensils has been used for forty years; and the owner tells me, that they may last for forty years longer."
To Brew Ale and Porter from Sugar and Malt.
To every quarter of malt take 100 lbs. of brown sugar, and in the result, it will be found that the sugar is equal to the malt. The quarter of malt is to be brewed with the same proportions, as though it were 2 quarters; and sugar is to be put into the tun, and the first wort let down upon it, rousing the whole well together.
The other worts are then to be let down, and the fermentation and other processes carried on as in the brewing of malt.
To Brew Burton Ale.
Of this strong ale, only a barrel and a half is drawn from a quarter, at 180° for the first mash, and 190° for the second, followed by a gyle of table beer. It is tunned at 58°, and cleansed at 72°. The Burton brewers use the finest pale malt, and grind it a day or two before being used. They employ Kentish hops, from 6 to 8 lbs. per quarter.
To Brew Notingham Ale in the small way.
The first copperful of boiling water is to be put into the mash-tub, there to lie a quarter of an hour, till the steam is far spent; or as soon as the hot water is put in, throw into it a pail or two of cold water, which will bring it at once to a proper temperature; then let 3 bus. of malt run leisurely into it, and stir or mash all the while, but no more than just to keep the malt from clotting or balling; when that is done, put 1 bu. of dry malt at the next copperful of water is boiled, then lade the top, and let it stand covered 2 hours, or till over the malt 3 handbowlsful at a time. These run off at the cock or tap by a very small stream before more is put on, which again must be returned into the mash-tub till it comes off exceedingly fine. This slow way takes 16 hours in brewing 4 bus. of malt. Between the ladings, put cold water into the copper to boil, while the other is running off; by this means, the copper is kept up nearly full, and the cock is kept running to the end of the brewing. Only 21 galls. must be saved of the first wort, which is reserved in a tub, wherein 4 oz. of hops are put, and then it is to be set by. For the second wort there are 20 galls. of water in the copper boiling which must be laded over in the same manner as the former, but no cold water need be mixed. When half of this is run out into a tub, it must be directly put into the copper with half of the first wort, strained through the brewing sieve as it lies on a small loose wooden frame over the copper, in order to keep those hops that were first put in to preserve it, which is to make the first copper 21 galls. Then, upon its beginning to boil, put in 1 lb. of hops in 1 or 2 canvas bags, somewhat larger than will just contain the hops, that an allowance may be given for their swell; this boil very briskly for an hour, when take the hops out and continue boiling the wort by itself till it breaks into particles a little ragged; it is then done, and must be dispersed into the cooling tubs very shallow. Put the remainder of the first and second wort together, and boil it in the same manner, and with the same quantity of fresh hops, as the first.
By this method of brewing, ale may be made as strong or as small as is thought fit, and so may the small beer that comes after.
To brew Essex Ale.
Procure 2 mashing-tubs, 1 that will mash 4 bus., and the other 2 bus., and a copper that holds + a hogshead. The water, when boiled, is put into the largest tub, and a pail of cold water immediately on that; then put the malt in by a handbowlful at a time, stirring it all the while, and so on in a greater quantity by degrees (for the danger