Online Vintage Brewing Books

[TKWoody]

I usually like to stream concerts from the live music section of archive.org, but I was poking around the American library section and found a bunch of old brewing books. I haven't had time to do much more than skim a few of the books, but it looks cool.

Here is the link: https://archive.org/details/americana?and[]=brewing&sort=-downloads&page=1

Let me know what you find in these books. I saw a few recipes along the lines of 25 bushels of pale malt, 25 pounds of hops.... Be interesting to hear if anybody converts these to home brew recipes and how they turn out.

 

[IslandLizard]

That is very cool!

Never thought of checking there for those things.

 

[unionrdr]

Saved that bad boy for later. Looked through sites like that before, but this is what I was looking for.

 

[jimboj79]

Awesome... Thx for the tip...

 

[BenCL]

There are a couple on Project Gutenberg as well

A Treatise on the Brewing of Beer by E. Hughes - 1796
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35597

The London and Country Brewer - 1736
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8900

A Study Of American Beers and Ales by James Garfield Riley and L. M. Tolman - 1917
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25050


The American Practical Brewer and Tanner by Joseph Coppinger - 1815
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20663

Unsure if there are any more on there...

 

[torilen]

Very cool. Thanks.

 

[unionrdr]

Got the free kindle reader app & downloaded that last one. Interesting read from 1815 so far.

 

[Baja_Brewer]

The London and Country Brewer - 1736
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8900

.

The many Inhabitants of Cities and Towns, as well as Travellers, that have for a long time suffered great Prejudices from unwholsome and unpleasant Beers and Ales, by the badness of Malts, underboiling the Worts, mixing injurious Ingredients, the unskilfulness of the Brewer, and the great Expense that Families have been at in buying them clogg'd with a heavy Excise...

Looks like not much has changed, what with the quality of some craft beers out there!

 

[unionrdr]

The American Practical Brewer and Tanner by Joseph Coppinger - 1815[/B]
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20663

Unsure if there are any more on there...[/QUOTE]
Some words in this one still hold true in the Preface; ...But a still more important consideration is the health & morals of our population, which appears to be essentially connected with the progress of the brewing trade. In proof of this assertion, I will beg leave to state a well known fact; which is, that in proportion as the consumption of malt liquors have increased in our large towns & cities, in that proportion has the health of our fellow citizens improved, & epidemics & intermittents, become less frequent. The same observation holds good as respects the country, where it is well known that those families that brew their own beer, & make a free use of it through the summer are, in general, all healthy & preserve their colour; whilst their less fortunate neighbors, who do not use beer at all, are devoured by fevers & intermittents.

 

[jwalk4]

Sick find!

I read the Salzman book on middle English industries while i was in university. Enlightening read for anyone who is nostalgic about "medieval times." Apparently everyone was a crook and a swindler, and the brewing industry was no different. So much so that the English nearly went bankrupt because other countries didn't want to trade them due to the purposefully poor quality of English goods.

Ale houses regularly brewed two distinctly different batches of beer: one good ale for inspectors from local brewing guilds that would certify an ale house as a legal distributor, and one batch of pure grog water to serve to actual customers.