The last operation the beer has to undergo is the fining, or clearing, which is sometimes done by the brewer, sometimes by the publi can. The fining material consists of isinglass, or other gelatinous matter, dissolved in acid beer, or sours, which, having been added to the ale or beer, agglutinates or collects to gether all the lighter floating matters which render the beer thick, and ultimately falls to the bottom of the vessel with them, leaving the beer clear and transparent.
Such is a simple outline of the processes, whether bitter or mild, strong or weak bever age is to be brewed, and whether the scale of operations be large or small. The reader will have no difficulty in conceiving that the me chanism and details of the processes must vary greatly, although the chemical principles may remain the same. In Bavaria the brewing of beer is one of the chief, perhaps the chief, manufacture ; for the Germans are resolute beer drinkers. They have black beer, white beer, brown beer, thin beer, strong beer, double beer, bitter beer—differences which we attempt, though not very successfully, to indicate by our names ale, beer, porter, stout, &c. Bavarian beer and Scotch ale differ from English beers and ales in being fermented at lower tempera tures. Ale, in England, is brewed from paler malt than beer; porter is brewed from pale malt coloured with burnt malt; stout is only a superior kind of porter; table-beer is simply poor or weak beer. Malt is the proper mate rial for yielding beer; but imitative beers are brewed from bran, potatoes, spruce, sugar, and treacle.
A few flavouring and sweetening ingre dients are recognized and allowable in brewing; but the world knows very little of the adultera tions to which beer is too often subjected. Quassia, gentian, wormwood, broom-top, to impart bitterness ; capsicum, ginger, coriander, orange peel, caraway, to give pungency; opium, cocculus indicws, nux vomica, tobacco, poppy, henbane, to intoxicate; molasses, sugar, trea cle, as substitutes for malt ; sulphuric acid, alum, vitriol, salt, to impart various properties —all are suspected, and more than suspected,'' of playing a part in the manufacture of some of those beverages which occasionally go by the name of beer. The Excise have battled hard against these difficulties ; but with only partial success.
Mr. Tizard, a brewer of Birmingham, has suggested a remarkable arrangement for fer menting the beer. He proposes the use of a subterranean fermenting room, sunk to such a depth as to have a uniform temperature from 45° to 52° at all hours and seasons. This,
in our country would be a depth of about 70 or 80 feet. The fermenting vessels are sur rounded with cold water in this subterranean chamber. The cooled wort is conveyed by a pipe down into the vessel ; and after the pro cesses of fermenting, cleansing, and fining, it is drawn up again through racking taps, which only just dip below the surface of the liquid, so as not to disturb the lees of the liquor.
A cooler for brewing, introduced by Mr. Davidson, acts in the following way. The wort is pumped up at a slow and regulated speed into a recipient at the top of the machine ; it there divides into a series of thin films or streams, and trickles down the inside of a number of thin metallic tubes, set vertically. An upward current of air passeS through these tubes, meeting and cooling the hot wort.
Various other improvements are frequently being introduced or suggested ; but we must hasten to say a few words of the vast establish ments wherein brewing is sometimes con ducted, and of which Messrs. Barclay and Per kins' Porter Brewery is the most notable spe eimen.
This large establishment covers many acres, and contains so many court yards and build ings surrounding them, that it almost requires a map to render the arrangement intelligible. Here is the vast ' tun-room ' or fermenting house ; north-east of this, on the river side, is the wharf for landing the malt and for ship ping the beer ; westward of the wharf are the immense malt. warehouses ; nearer at hand are the steam-engine apparatus, the water re servoir, the cooperage, the ale and porter brewhouses, the fining house, the store vaults, the splendid stables for the dray-horses. Such are the objects which present them selves, over an area of eight or nine acres. And when we examine them more closely, the details themselves are vast. Everything is on a large scale. The water cisterns are 30 feet long by 20 wide ; the malt-bins, two dozen in number, are each large enough to contain an ordinary three-storied house ; the great brew house is nearly as large as Westminster Hall; the copper vessels for boiling contain 12,000 gallons each ; the store of beer always on hand requires 150 vats, of an average capacity of 30,000 gallons each ; one particularvat con tains 100,000 gallons, and weighs when full 500 tons ; the number of butts, puncheons, and barrels, belonging to the establishment exceeds 60,000 ; about 200 horses are kept, who have stables arranged with all scientific appliances, and a veterinary surgeon on their especial behoof.