bertrandrussell
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For those who are interested, I have selected a few excerpts from William Cobbetts 1822 Cottage Economy, the first two chapters of which are devoted to brewing beer. The whole text can be freely accessed here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32863/32863-h/32863-h.htm
The author identifies taxes on malt and hops as the cause of an increase in tea drinking in England, a practice he views as wholly despicable:
I once more express my most anxious desire to see abolished for ever the accursed tax on malt, which, I verily believe, has done more harm to the people of England than was ever done to any people by plague, pestilence, famine, and civil war.
Here is an interesting method for determining when your strike water has cooled to the correct mashing temperature without using a thermometer. I wonder how accurate it is:
This heat is one hundred and seventy degrees by the thermometer. If you have a thermometer, this is ascertained easily; but, without one, take this rule, by which so much good beer has been made in England for hundreds of years: when you can, by looking down into the tub, see your face clearly in the water, the water is become cool enough; and you must not put the malt in before.
What do you make of this unusual yeast starter? What was the flour for?
About half a pint of good yeast is sufficient. This should first be put into a thing of some sort that will hold about a gallon of your liquor; the thing should then be nearly filled with liquor, and with a stick or spoon you should mix the yeast well with the liquor in this bowl, or other thing, and stir in along with the yeast a handful of wheat or rye flour The flour may not be necessary; but, as the country people use it, it is, doubtless, of some use; for their hereditary experience has not been for nothing."
What time do you wake up to brew?
There seems to be a great number of things to do in brewing, but the greater part of them require only about a minute each. A brewing, such as I have given the detail of above, may be completed in a day; but, by the word day, I mean to include the morning, beginning at four oclock.
Cobbett was a man of his times:
The putting of the beer into barrel is not more than an hours work for a servant woman, or a tradesmans or a farmers wife. There is no heavy work, no work too heavy for a woman in any part of the business, otherwise I would not recommend it to be performed by the women, who, though so amiable in themselves, are never quite so amiable as when they are useful; and as to beauty, though men may fall in love with girls at play, there is nothing to make them stand to their love like seeing them at work.
Finally, Cobbetts process does not involve sparging in the way familiar to modern brewers. Instead, an entirely separate, weaker batch is made from the initial grains, called small beer. Has anyone tried making small beer?
The author identifies taxes on malt and hops as the cause of an increase in tea drinking in England, a practice he views as wholly despicable:
I once more express my most anxious desire to see abolished for ever the accursed tax on malt, which, I verily believe, has done more harm to the people of England than was ever done to any people by plague, pestilence, famine, and civil war.
Here is an interesting method for determining when your strike water has cooled to the correct mashing temperature without using a thermometer. I wonder how accurate it is:
This heat is one hundred and seventy degrees by the thermometer. If you have a thermometer, this is ascertained easily; but, without one, take this rule, by which so much good beer has been made in England for hundreds of years: when you can, by looking down into the tub, see your face clearly in the water, the water is become cool enough; and you must not put the malt in before.
What do you make of this unusual yeast starter? What was the flour for?
About half a pint of good yeast is sufficient. This should first be put into a thing of some sort that will hold about a gallon of your liquor; the thing should then be nearly filled with liquor, and with a stick or spoon you should mix the yeast well with the liquor in this bowl, or other thing, and stir in along with the yeast a handful of wheat or rye flour The flour may not be necessary; but, as the country people use it, it is, doubtless, of some use; for their hereditary experience has not been for nothing."
What time do you wake up to brew?
There seems to be a great number of things to do in brewing, but the greater part of them require only about a minute each. A brewing, such as I have given the detail of above, may be completed in a day; but, by the word day, I mean to include the morning, beginning at four oclock.
Cobbett was a man of his times:
The putting of the beer into barrel is not more than an hours work for a servant woman, or a tradesmans or a farmers wife. There is no heavy work, no work too heavy for a woman in any part of the business, otherwise I would not recommend it to be performed by the women, who, though so amiable in themselves, are never quite so amiable as when they are useful; and as to beauty, though men may fall in love with girls at play, there is nothing to make them stand to their love like seeing them at work.
Finally, Cobbetts process does not involve sparging in the way familiar to modern brewers. Instead, an entirely separate, weaker batch is made from the initial grains, called small beer. Has anyone tried making small beer?
