HOW TO BREW YOUR OWN BEER

The first preparatory step towards brewing is to gather your necessary plant together in proper working order, and thoroughly clean. Your plant or utensils must consist of the following articles, viz.:--A thirty-gallon copper, two cooling-tubs capable of holding each about thirty gallons; a mash-tub of sufficient size to contain fifty-four gallons, and another tub of smaller size, called an underback; a bucket or pail, a wooden hand-bowl, a large wooden funnel, a mash-stirrer, four scraped long stout sticks, a good-sized loose-wrought wicker basket for straining the beer, and another small bowl-shaped wicker basket, called a tapwaist, to fasten inside the mash-tub on to the inner end of the spigot and faucet, to keep back the grains when the wort is being run off out of the mash-tub. You will also require some beer barrels, a couple of brass or metal cocks, some vent-pegs, and some bungs. I do not pretend to assert that the whole of the foregoing articles are positively indispensable for brewing your own beer. I merely enumerate what is most proper to be used; leaving the manner and means of replacing such of these articles as may be out of your reach very much to your intelligence in contriving to use such as you possess, or can borrow from a neighbour, instead. Spring water, from its hardness, is unfit for brewing; fresh fallen rain water, caught in clean tubs, or water fetched from a brook or river, are best adapted for brewing; as, from the fact of their being free from all calcareous admixture, their consequent softness gives them the greater power to extract all the goodness and strength from the malt and hops.

In order to ensure having good wholesome beer, it is necessary to calculate your brewing at the rate of two bushels of malt and two pounds of hops to fifty-four gallons of water; these proportions, well managed, will produce three kilderkins of good beer. I recommend that you should use malt and hops of the best quality only; as their plentiful yield of beneficial substance fully compensates for their somewhat higher price. A thin shell, well filled up plump with the interior flour, and easily bitten asunder, is a sure test of good quality in malt; superior hops are known by their light greenish-yellow tinge of colour, and also by their bright, dry, yet somewhat gummy feel to the touch, without their having any tendency to clamminess. The day before brewing, let all your tackle be well scrubbed and rinsed clean, the copper wiped out, and all your tubs and barrels half filled with cold water, to soak for a few hours, so as to guard against any chance of leakage, and afterwards emptied, and set to dry in the open air, weather permitting; or otherwise, before the fire. Fasten the tapwaist inside the mash-tub to the inner end of the faucet and spigot, taking care to place the mash-tub in an elevated position, resting upon two benches or stools. Early in the dawn of morning, light the fire under your copper, filled with water over-night, and, as soon as it boils, with it fill the mash-tub rather more than three-parts full; and as soon as the first heat of the water has subsided, and you find that you are able to bear your fingers drawn slowly through it without experiencing pain, you must then throw in the malt, stirring it about for ten minutes or so; then lay some sticks across the mash-tub, and cover it with sacks or blankets, and allow it to steep for three hours. At the end of the three hours, let off the wort from the mash-tub into the underback-tub, which has been previously placed under the spigot and faucet ready to receive it; pouring the first that runs out ba