an interesting brewing guide from the 1800s

I just finished reading "The town and country brewery book" that I first found in an antique bookstore. They wanted 700 bucks for this old book so a quick glance was all I got. Then I did a Google search and found this book was on Google books for free! It was printed in the 1800s in England and has really interesting instructions on brewing. Seems they do a lot of steps while barely understanding how they help them.

Anyway here is the link it is at least a good book to read on a flight or road trip. http://books.google.com/books?id=euFuxoTQd4UC&printsec=frontcover&output=html_text

There's lots of links, and books of brewing from all different eras in my beer history links thread.

Oh wow I will have to check those out. My favorite suggestion so far from these old books has been to put a shovel of coals into the mas. I guess they were adding soot to change the ph and didn't even understand.

In fact the first post has several links to things about brewing in the 1800's, that's the stuff I am most interested in, and that was what I was researching when I decided to start a repository of all the historical links I came across.

Cool book....I was especially interested in the section of "AN OLD METHOD OF GIVING BUTT A FINE TANG."

I'm always looking for an old-school method of getting my azz some fine 'tang. Gotta love 18th Century English.

This is really cool.

I especially like the part on TO FORWARD FERMENTATION WHEN TOO SLOW and TO CHECK TOO FORWARD A FERMENTATION.

Thanks for posting - looks interesting!

Thats a fun read! Thanks for posting this!

TopherM I couldn't agree more about the "giving porter or butt a fine tang" I laughed my arse off. I am saddened that the hogshead unit of measurement has become obsolete. I am going to make it my new personal goal to reference everything from hence forth in measures of hogsheads. Wow the old English speak is already stuck in my head after that read.

If you're interested in wines at all, I have this book called "Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wines." It wasn't much. There are some neat copies of old recipes with a beer and cider here and there. Some of the recipes are hard to understand and some are just odd...but it's fun to read.

If you're interested in a copy of the book. Amazon has it for far less than $700. It's not an original, obviously, but seems to have the same contents:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1148377867/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

In the OP there is an even better deal. The book is free on google books. I would love to have another original brewing book. I have a german brewing book from the 1700s. It appears all hand drawn art with printed text. I don't know any german but it is still entertaining to read through.

Project Gutenberg has a few older brewing books as well:

The London and Country Brewer by Anonymous
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8900

The American Practical Brewer and Tanner by Joseph Coppinger
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20663

A Study Of American Beers and Ales by James Garfield Riley and L. M. Tolman
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/sea...ix=subject_id&sort_order=downloads&query=5985

And one more I missed, this one from 1796

A Treatise on the Brewing of Beer by E. Hughes
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35597