Beer barrel

“ If more Ale, then hot Boiling water must be laded over to slow that one Bowl must run almost off before another is put over, which will occasion the whole Brewing to last about sixteen Hours, especially if the Dundle way is followed, of spending it out of the Tap as small as a Straw, and as fine as Sack, and then it will be quickly so in the Barrel: Of if less or weaker Ale is to be made and good small Beer, then the second Copper of boiling water may be put over expeditiously and drawn out with a large and fast steam. ”

“ Fining or Clarifying:—Beer which has been badly brewed or badly stored, or which from other causes may be thick or muddy, requires clarifying by artificial means. For a barrel about 1 to 11⁄2 pint of brewer’s finings (isinglass or fish-gelatin dissolved in sour beer) is put into a bucket, and some of the beer being gradually added, the whole is violently agitated with a whisk until a frothy head is formed. The mixture is then thrown into the cask of beer, and well ‘rummaged up,’ after which the bung is replaced, and the liquor allowed to repose for a week or ten days. ”

“ They began to hop their mild beer more and the Publican started three, four, sometimes six butts at once, but so little idea had the brewer or his customers incurring the charge of great stocks of beer, that some moneyed people made a trade of purchasing their hopped beers at the first hand, keeping them sometime and when stale to dispose of the same to Publicans for 5/- per barrel and 6/- per barrel. Our tastes but slowly alter or reform. ”

“ Thunder is also a spoiler of good malt liquor, to prevent the effects of which, laying a solid piece of iron on each cask has hitherto been esteemed an effectual prevention of the above injuries.” In some places, too, an iron pad fitting closely over the bunghole is used, and in others an iron tray answers the same purpose. An old receipt book contains the following remarkable directions for making forty sorts of ale out of one barrel of liquor. ”

“ One of the chief comforts of affluence is that you may have beer in by the barrel; for then Sundays and closing times vex not, and you have but to reach the length of your arm for another pot whenever moved thereunto. Nobody in Canning Town had beer by the barrel except the tradesmen, and for that Bill had long envied the man who kept shop. ”

“ Three years later still the Queen declares that the disorders of the Brewers, through their “ungodly gredyness,” have grown to such lengths that something must be done; and an Act of Common Council brings back the beer to double and single, and applies other remedies.
In 1654 three sorts of beer are allowed—the best at 8s. the barrel, the second at 6s., and the small at 4s.; and shortly afterwards a fourth kind was added at 10s. The efforts of the authorities to fix the prices of ale and beer by arbitrary means were not long afterwards finally discontinued. ”

“ But I let 'em say what they'd a mind to. When a beer barrel begins to fiz out o' t' bung hoil, tha' mun let it fiz a bit, thof't mak a mucky slop, or it'll bust t' barrel. I said nowt; I just set and thowt o' what I'd heard, and I played it ower again on my in'ards.
"T' next day I thowt I sud like to goa and hear t' band of t' Orse Guards. ”

“ Ivory shavings have been recommended for rapidly maturing beer, and it is related that a woman, who lived at Leighton Buzzard, in Bedfordshire, and had the best ale in the town, once told a gentleman she had drink just done working in the barrel, and that she would wager it was fine enough to drink out of a glass even before it was bunged. ”

“ I ought not to omit to mention that during the interval two men arrived in camp, of foreign and uncertain origin, bringing with them something which always appeals at once to the soldier's heart—a barrel, of beer! Having obtained leave to sell to the men, the amount being limited to a pint a man, they very soon came to the end of their barrel, no doubt with a handsome profit to themselves. ”

“ Beer was taxed then, as now, by the barrel. 'Yesterday the Commons, in a Committee of Ways and Means, resolved, That an additional duty of 3d. per barrel be laid upon all beer and ale above 6s. per barrel; and under 6s., 1d.; vinegar 9d.; cyder per hogshead 5d.; strong waters mead and matheglin 1d. per gallon.' [271]
But, for well-to-do people, wine was the drink, and the variety was nearly as great as in our time. It was a hard-drinking age, and the habit was universal. ”

“ I that have dealt so long in the fire, will not be to seek in smoke, now. Then six and twenty shillings a barrel I will advance on my beer, and fifty shillings a hundred on my bottle-ale; I have told you the ways how to raise it. Froth your cans well in the filling, at length, rogue, and jog your bottles o’ the buttock, sirrah, then skink out the first glass ever, and drink with all companies, though you be sure to be drunk; you’ll misreckon the better, and be less ashamed on’t. ”

“ I have known reapers and mowers make it their boast that they could lie on their backs and never take the wooden bottle (in the shape of a small barrel) from their lips till they had drunk a gallon, and from the feats I have seen I verily believe it a fact. The beer they get is usually poor and thin, though sometimes in harvest the farmers bring out a taste of strong liquor, but not till the work is nearly over; for from this very practice of drinking enormous quantities of small beer the labourer cannot drink more than a very limited amount of good liquor without getting tipsy. ”

“ The purest and most essential parts of the grain being extracted, it is not to be expect197ed, from an impoverished grist, that beers can be made to possess all their necessary constituent parts, or to keep so long, as where fresh malt is used; but the sort of small beer, which answers best to the brewer, and is most salubrious for the consumer, must be, by the addition of fresh hops, to form the remaining strength into keeping small beer, the greater quantity of hops necessary to be allowed, beside those boiled in the ale, is 21⁄4 pounds for every barrel intended to be made. ”

“ Finings have usually a specific gravity of from 1·010 to 1·016, and, when added to beer in a fit condition for fining, invariably go to the top, and not to the bottom. In fining beer in a barrel laid on its side, if the finings do not make their appearance at the bung-hole, the beer will not become bright. The isinglass must not be dissolved with heat, nor in hot water. ”

“ When the quantity of fermentable matter, suspended in a barrel of worts, intended for beer, or ale, is from five to ten pounds more than twenty-five pounds per barrel, every particle of it may be safely attenuated, as the quantity of spirit generated will be sufficient to preserve the beer, or ale, for any requisite length of time, provided it has been properly hopped, &c., or in lieu thereof, received certain other additions to improve its vinosity, strength, and keeping ”

“ Among the many receipts given in old works for “recovering” ale or beer when it has turned sour, is one directing the housewife to put a handful or two of ground malt into the beer, stir it well together, which will make the beer work and become good again. In another receipt the brewer is directed to put a handful of oatmeal into a barrel of beer when first laid into the cellar, which will cause it to carry with it a quick and lively taste. The root of flower-de-luce or iris suspended in ale is said to be a specific against sourness. ”

“ Small Beer for Shipping.
12 Bushels of Pale Malt. 12 Bushels of Amber Malt. 24 14 lb. of Hops. Cleansed 24 Barrels.
Let your malt be fine ground; first liquor 172; mash one hour, stand one hour, run down smartly; beat of second mash 180; mash one hour, stand two hours, boil two hours; making your length sufficiently long to give one barrel of beer to each bushel of malt. Pitch your tun at 70 degrees, giving one gallon of solid yest; cleanse within twenty-four hours. The fresher this beer is sent out the better: being very thin in body and low priced, it cannot be expected to last long. ”

“ It may be suggested that in these cases prevention is better than cure—drink your beer while it is good, and do not give it an opportunity of getting sour. An old receipt for preserving small beer without the help of hops, is to mix a small quantity of treacle with a handful of wheat and bean flour and a little ginger, to knead the mixture to a due consistence, and put it into the barrel. ”

“ Inferior kinds of beer have also been made from other ingredients than barley-malt, among which may be named the grain of the cheaper cereals, bran, potatoes, turnips, beet-root, carrots, parsnips, pea-shells, and other vegetable substances rich in starch and sugar, all of which will produce beer by being mashed with water in the common way, with about 9% or 10% of barley-malt.
One quarter of the best barley-malt yields, by skilful mashing, fully 84 lbs. of ‘saccharine,’ or soluble sweet extractive matter. This concentrated within the compass of one barrel (33 galls.) gives a sp. gr. ”

“ The boiling liquid is strained, cooled, and run into the fermentation vats, where yeast is added. During the fermentation a part of the sugar derived from the starch is converted into alcohol. After a refining process the beer is ready to go into the casks. Ale, Scotch ale, small beer, porter, stout, and lager beer are the malt products of barley. The amount of capital now invested in the manufacture of beer is very great, and to those who carefully measure the evils of the beer shop it seems like a very poor place for one’s money. ”

“ The production of Great Britain increased from 7,670,100 barrels in 1830 to 25,336,811 barrels in 1870. It consists chiefly of the ancient amber-colored ale and the modern dark-brown porter. The Belgian beers are the mars, a thin beer; the lambic, a strong and light-colored drink; and the faro, which the retailer himself prepares by mixing the other two kinds. The production of France has more than doubled since 1842. A strong lager-beer and a weaker small-beer are most in favor, and the foreign beers are in common use. ”

“ All we have now to do is to turn out of the copper such a number of barrels as will make up our calculated quantity in the gyle-tun. The only difference that can then arise must proceed from the difference of evaporation from the wort in the coolers, which will be found to vary more or less according to the state of the atmosphere. Our beer, therefore, must be a little stronger or weaker accordingly; but the aggregate gravity will be found to correspond very nearly with the calculation made from the unboiled worts ”

“ Some hams hanging in the kitchen were taken out for burial, and the barrel of beer in the scullery was stove in with a kick from Boxer's hoof, otherwise nothing in the house was touched. ”

“ Among the poor ... the popular beverage was still ale or beer, the use of which—especially before the art of noxious adulteration was brought to its present perfection—has always been more common than the abuse. The consumption appears to have been amazing. It was computed in 1688 that no less than 12,400,000 barrels were brewed in England in a single year, though the entire population probably little exceeded 5,000,000. In 1695, with a somewhat heavier excise, it sank to 11,350,000 barrels, but even then almost a third part of the arable land of the kingdom was devoted to barley. ”

“ Every thing is done by machinery, which is all set in motion by a single steam-engine. The beer is boiled in four vats, each of which holds three hundred barrels. The hops are first put into the vat or cauldron dry, and kept stirring by a machine, that they may not burn. During this process the sweet-wort flows in upon them. There is a curious apparatus for cooling the beer in hot weather;—it is made to pass through a number of pipes like those of an organ, through which a stream of cold water is then let to flow, and so on, alternately. ”

“ When such drugs as cocculus Indicus, opium, tobacco, &c. &c. are used for giving a stupifying quality to the beer, every brewer using them must know, that besides subjecting himself to heavy penalties, he is doing gross injustice to the public.
It is generally supposed that the finest ale cannot be brewed without flavouring matter. This, however, is quite a mistake. The flavour of the finest Burton, Scotch, and other ales, proceeds chiefly from the care taken in selecting the best malt and hops, and the high gravities of the worts. ”

“ Pennant gives a list of the chief porter brewers of London at the end of last century, with the number of barrels of strong beer they brewed from Midsummer, 1786, to Midsummer, 1787. Samuel Whitbread heads the list with 150,280 barrels, and among the others may be noted Calvert, now the City of London Brewery; Hester Thrale, now Barclay and Perkins; W. Read; and Richard Meux. Most of the other names, though famous in their day and generation, are not familiar to the modern reader. ”

“ I emptied my canteen of water and filled it with whiskey. Some boxes of hard-tack had been opened, from which I filled my haversack. There were still some barrels of whiskey, also barrels of pork, which the group decided it would be unsafe to break open on account of the noise it would make. I dipped my quart cup into the barrel once more and hurried away with it in my hand, returning to the guard with whom I shared its contents. I kept silent regarding my canteen, however. I did not dare tell my comrades where I got the liquor, for fear some of them would become intoxicated ”