Theory and Practice of Brewing — An Explanation of the Technical Terms

Pall-Mall, July 20, 1758. AN

EXPLANATION

OF THE

TECHNICAL TERMS.

The intent of every brewer, when he forms his drink, is to extract the fermentable parts of the malt, in the most perfect manner; to add hops, in such proportion as experience teaches him will preserve and ameliorate the beer; and to employ just so much yeast as is sufficient to obtain a complete fermentation.

Perhaps it may be said, these particulars are already sufficiently understood, and that it would be a much more useful work to publish remedies for the imperfections, or diseases, beer is naturally or accidentally subject to, and which at present are deemed incurable.

But if the designs just now mentioned be executed according to the rules of chymistry, such imperfections and such diseases not existing, the remedies will not be wanted; for beer brewed upon true principles, is, neither naturally nor accidentally, subject to many disorders often perceived in it.

Hence it is evident, that some knowledge of chymistry is absolutely necessary to complete the brewer, as, without the informations acquired from that science, he must be unqualified to lay down rules for his practice, and to secure to himself the favor of the public; for which purpose, and to make this treatise useful to those concerned in the practical part of brewing, it has been thought adviseable to avoid, as much as possible, the technical terms of art, to prefix an explanation of those that necessarily occur, and, in as short a manner as possible, to trace the properties of fire, air, water, and earth, as far as they relate to the subject.

ACIDS are all those things which taste sour, as vinegar, juice of lemons, spirit of nitre, spirit of salt, the oil and spirit of vitriol, &c. and are put in a violent agitation, by being mixed with certain earths, or the ashes of vegetables.

An acid enters, more or less, into the composition of all plants, and is produced by, or rather is the last effect of, fermentation.

Mixed in a due proportion with an alkali, it constitutes a neutral salt, that is, a salt wherein neither the acid nor alkali prevail.

Acids are frequently termed acid salts, though generally they appear under a fluid form.

ALKALIES, or alkaline salts, are of a nature directly contrary to the acids, and generally manifest themselves by effervescing therewith: they have an urinous taste, and are produced from the ashes of vegetables, and by several other means.

They, as well as testaceous and calcarious substances, are frequently made use of by coopers, to absorb the acid parts of stale beer, by them called _softning_.

AIR is a thin elastic fluid, surrounding the globe of the earth; it is absolutely necessary to the preservation both of animal and vegetable life, and for the exciting and carrying on fermentation.

ALCOHOL is the pure spirit of wine, generally supposed to be without the least particle of water or phlegm.

ANIMALS are organized bodies, endued with sensation and life.

Minerals are said to grow and increase, plants to grow and live, but animals only to have sensation.

—Animal substances cannot ferment so as to produce by themselves a vinous liquor; but there may be cases wherein some of their parts rather help than retard the act of fermentation.

[1] ATMOSPHERE is that vast collection of air, with which the earth is surrounded to a considerable height.

ATTRACTION is an indefinite term, applicable to all actions whereby bodies tend towards one another, whether by virtue of their weight, magnetism, electricity, or any other power.

It is not, therefore, the cause determining some bodies to approach one another, that is expressed by the word _attraction_, but the effect itself.

The space, through which this power extends, is called the _sphere of attraction_.

BLACKING is a technical term used by coopers, to denote sugar that is calcined, until it obtains the colour that occasions the name.

BREWING is the operation of preparing beers and ales from malt.

BOILING may thus be accounted for.

The minute particles of fuel being by fire detached from each other, and becoming themselves fire, pass through the pores of the vessel, and mix with the fluid.

These, being perpetually in an active state, communicate their motion to the water: hence arises, at first, a small intestine motion, and from a continued action in the first cause, the effect is increased, and the motion of the liquor continually accelerated; by degrees, it becomes sensibly agitated, but the particles of the fire, acting chiefly on the particles that compose the lowest surface of the water, give them an impulse upwards, by rendering them specifically lighter, so as to determine them to ascend, according to the laws of equilibrium.

Hence there is a constant flux of water from the bottom to the top of the vessel, and reciprocally from the top to the bottom.

This appears to be the reason why water is hot at the top sooner than at the bottom, and why an equal heat cannot be distributed through the whole.

The thermometer therefore can be of little service, to determine immediately the degree of heat, especially in large vessels, on which account it is better for brewers to heat a certain quantity just to the act of boiling, and to temper it, by adding a sufficient quantity of cold water.

Boiling water is incapable of receiving any increase of heat, though acted on by ever so great a fire, unless the atmosphere becomes heavier, or the vapours of the water be confined.

It occasions the mercury to rise, according to Farenheit’s scale, to 212 degrees.

CHARR.

A body is said to be charred when, by fire, its volatile or most active parts are drove out; its coarse oils, by the same means, placed chiefly on the external parts; and so deprived of color as to be quite black.

CLEANSING is the act of removing the beer from the ton, where it was first fermented, into the casks.

CLOUDY is an epithet joined to such beers, which, from the violent heat given to the water that brewed them, are loaded with more oils than can be attenuated by fermentation, and incorporated with the water; from whence a muddy and grey oil is seen floating on the surface of the liquor, though the body is often transparent; this oil is frequently extracted in such quantity as to exceed the power of any known menstruum.

COHESION is that action by which the particles of the same body adhere together, as if they were but one.

COLD is a relative term in opposition to heat.

Its greatest degree is not known, and it is supposed that the colder a body is, the less is the agitation of its internal parts.

COLOUR; a greater or less degree of heat causes different colours in most bodies, and from a due observation of the colour of malt, we may determine what degree of heat it has been impressed with.

DENSITY expresses the closeness, compactness, or near approach of the parts of a body to one another: the more a body weighs in proportion to its bulk, the greater is its density.

Gold is the densest body in nature, because there is none known of the same bulk, which weighs so much.

EARTH is that fossil matter or element, whereof our globe partly consists.

EBULLITION is the boiling or bubbling of water, or any other liquor, when the fire has forced itself a passage through it.

Brewers suppose water to be just beginning to boil, when they perceive a small portion of it forced from the bottom upwards in a right line, so as to disturb the surface: when the liquor is in this state, they call it _through_, or upon the point of ebullition.

The vulgar notion that the water is hotter at this time than when it boils, is without any foundation.

EFFERVESCENCE is a sudden agitation, arising in certain bodies upon mixing them together; this agitation most commonly generates heat.

ELASTICITY, or springiness, is that property of bodies, by which they restore themselves to their former figure, after any pressure or distension.

EXPANSION is the swelling or increase of the bulk of bodies from heat, or any other cause.

EXTRACT consists of the parts of a body separated from the rest, by cold or hot water.

FERMENTATION is a sensible internal motion of the particles of a mixture: by the continuance of this motion, the particles are gradually removed from their former situation, and, after some visible separation, joined together again in a different order and arrangement, so as to constitute a new compound.

No liquors are capable of inebriating, except those that have been fermented.

FIXED BODIES are those, which, consisting of grosser parts, cohering by a strong attraction, and by that means less susceptible of agitation, can neither be separated nor raised, without a strong heat, or perhaps not without fermentation.

FIRE is only known by its properties, of which the chief are to penetrate and dilate all solid and fluid bodies.

FREEZING POINT is the degree of cold, at which water begins to be formed into ice, which, according to Farenheit’s scale, is expressed by 32. FOXED is a technical term, used by brewers, to indicate beers in a putrid state.

GUMS are concreted vegetable juices, which transude through the bark of certain trees, and harden upon the surface; they easily dissolve in water, and by that means distinguish themselves from balsams or resins.

HERMETICALLY SEALED is a particular method of stopping the mouth of vessels, so close that the most subtil spirit cannot fly out, which is done by heating the neck of the bottles, till it is just ready to melt, and then with hot pinchers twisting it close together.

HOMOGENEOUS is an appellation given to such parts or subjects, which are similar or of the same nature and properties.

ISINGLASS is a preparation from a fish called huso, somewhat bigger than the sturgeon; a solution of which in stale beer is used, to fine or precipitate other beers: it is imported from Russia by the Dutch, and from them to us.

LIGHT consists of particles of matter inconceivably small, capable of exciting in us the sensation of colours, by being reflected from every point of the surface of luminous bodies; but, notwithstanding they are so exceeding small, Sir Isaac Newton found means to divide a single ray into seven distinct parts, viz.

red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

MALT, in general, is any sort of grain, first germinated, and then dried, so as to prevent any future vegetation: that generally used, is made of barley, which experience has found to be the fittest for the purpose of brewing.

MEDIUM is that space, through which a body in motion passes: air is the medium through which the bodies near the earth move; water is the medium wherein fish live; glass affords a medium or a free passage to light.

—This term is also made use of, to express the mean of two numbers, and sometimes the middle between several quantities.

MUSTS are the unfermented juices of grapes, or of any other vegetable substances.

MENSTRUUM is any fluid, which is capable of interposing its parts between those of other bodies, and in this manner either dissolves them perfectly, or extracts some part of them.

OIL is an unctuous, inflammable substance, drawn from several animal and vegetable substances.

PRECIPITATION.

Isinglass dissolved becomes a glutinous and heavy body;

this put into malt liquors intended to be fined, carries down, by its weight, all those swimming particles, which prevent its transparency;

and this act is called fining, or precipitation.

REPULSION; “Doctor Knight defines it to be that cause which makes bodies mutually endeavour to recede from each other, with different forces at different times.

” In this case they are placed beyond the sphere of each other’s attraction or cohesion, and mutually fly from each other.

RESINS, or balsams, are the oils of vegetables inspissated and combined with a proportion of the acid salts; as well as they mix with any spirituous liquor, as little are they soluble in water; but they become so, either by the intervention of gums or soaps, or by the attenuating virtue of fermentation.

SALTS are substances sharp and pungent, which readily dissolve in water, and from thence, by evaporation, crystallise and appear in a solid form.

They easily unite together, and form different compounds.

Thus salts, composed of acids and alkalies, partake of both, and are called neutral.

SETT: a grist of malt is by brewers said to be sett, when, instead of separating for extraction, it runs in clods, increases in heat, and coagulates.

This accident is owing to the over quantity of fire in the water, applied to any of the extractions.

The air included in the grist, which is a principal agent in resolving the malt, being thereby expelled, the mass remains inert, and its parts, adhering too closely together, are with difficulty separated.

Though an immediate application of more cold water to the grist is the only remedy, yet, as the cohesion is speedy and strong, it seldom takes effect.

—New malts, which have not yet lost the heat they received from the kiln, are most apt to lead the brewer into this error, and generally in the first part of the process.

SUGAR, or saccharine salts, are properly those that come from the sugar canes; many plants, fruits and grains give sweet juices reducible to the same form; they are supposed to be acids smoothed over with oils; all vegetable sweets are capable of fermenting spontaneously when crude; if boiled, they require an addition of yeast to make them perform that act.

Malt, or its extracts, have all the properties of saccharine salts.

SULPHUR.

Though by sulphur is commonly understood the mineral substance called brimstone, yet in chymistry it is frequently used to signify in general any oily substance, inflammable by fire, and, without some saline addition, indissoluble in water.

SOAP OR SAPONACEOUS JUICES.

Common soap is made of oil mixed with alkaline salts: this mixture causes a froth on being agitated in water.

The oils of vegetables are, in some degree, mixed with their salts;

and according to the nature of these salts, appear either resinous or saponaceous, that is, soluble or indissoluble in water.

— Sugar is a kind of soap, rendering oil miscible with water; and therefore all bodies, from which saccharine salts are extracted, may be termed saponaceous.

VEGETABLE is a term applied to plants, considered as capable of growth, having vessels and parts for this purpose, but generally supposed to be without sensation.

VINEGAR is an acid penetrating liquor, prepared from wine, beer, cyder, or a must, which has been fermented as far as it was capable.

VITRIOL is, in general, a metalline substance combined with the strongest acid salt known.

This acid, being separated from the metal, differs in nothing from that which is extracted from alum or brimstone.

It is improperly called spirit of vitriol, when diluted with water, and, with as little propriety, oil, when free from it.

VOLATILE BODIES are those, which, either from their smallness or their form, do not cohere very strongly together, and being most susceptible of those agitations, which keep liquors in a fluid state, are most easily separated and rarified into vapour, with a gentle heat, and on the contrary condensed and brought down with cold.

WINE is a brisk, agreeable, spirituous, fluid cordial, formed from fermented vegetable bodies.

In this sense beers and ales may be called, and really are, barley wines.

WORTS are the unfermented extracts of malt.

YEAST is both the flowers and lees of a fermented wort, the former of these being elastic air enveloped in a subject less strong and less consistent than the latter.

_PRINCIPLES OF THE THEORY OF BREWING.

_ SECTION I.