OK, a few more pearls of wisdom from Home Brewing Without Failures (1965 home brewing guide):
-He recommends using brown or "burnt" sugar or even "gravy browning" to get the proper color for darker beers when you don't use many darker malts.
-He says you can get yeast from a bottle of commercial "Schlitz or Budweiser" and make a starter out of that.
-"The practice of using yeast from bottled beers can only be done successfully when the beers are dark; this is because only dark beers have a yeast deposit. Bright, light, sparkling ales do not have them." This seems to directly contradict what he said one page ago...
-He makes an aside about wine yeast and says that 14% abv kills wine yeast dead so if you want sweet wine you just add sugar beyond what is necessary for 14% abv and then the yeast will die and the rest of the sugar will remain in the wine and sweeten it.
-Another reference to skimming off ale krausen.
-Table salt is a good yeast nutrient so it's good to put in your beer.
-While a secondary gets an airlock, the primary should get a sheet of plastic with holes punched it in stretched over the top.
-As draught beers, by definition, have no carbonation if you want them to have head you have to buy "heading liquid" and add it to your draught beers. Would love a "well actually" about "heading liquid."
-If you don't use a brown bottle for your beer "the colour and sometimes the quality of the beer will suffer." This seems to be a reference to skunking but color? Huh?
-"The heavy froth one sees on the top of most stouts and particularly Guinness -- to which I am especially partial -- is mostly yeast forced to the top of the glass by the gas rising."
Love the "well actually"s I'm getting from my posts in this books, it's interesting to see what's real brewing history and what's the author being dumb.