Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ... MATERIALS GENERALLY--WATER. T"TyHERE are three materials which are essential to J I I the composition of what is now known as beer, A. and a proportion of all three of these materials must be used in brewing anything that can now be properly called beer. These materials are Water, Malt, and Hops; and if a pure beer is to be brewed each of them must be free from impurities, and must also contain those substances which are essential to its constitution as a brewing material. Beer was not always brewed from the above three materials. No doubt grain of some sort and generally more or less malted supplied the saccharine matter, and water must always have constituted the great bulk of the liquid, but the use of hops is a comparatively recent innovation and one that was by no means tamely submitted to at the time of their first introduction either by the public at large or by the growers of other bitters. Hops, however, after a time established their superiority to all other bitters as a brewing material, and although I think that it is not only permissable, but even advisable, in seasons when hops are scarce and of inferior quality, to assist their action by the addition of a small proportion of other equally wholesome bitters and astringents, still hops must undoubtedly be reckoned together with malt and water as constituting the three essential materials for the manufacture of beer. As water constitutes from about seventy-five to ninety per cent, of all beers it may be looked upon as the most important of the above three materials. I will therefore give it precedence over the two others, which I will afterwards consider in the order in whicfr I[have named them. Water is composed of one part by weight of hydrogen, combined with eight..."
