Glimpses of Its History and Description of Its Manufacture NEW YORK: UNITED STATES BREWERS’ ASSOCIATION 1909 This book is composed mainly of selected parts of two separate essays written by the undersigned and published many years ago on two different occasions and for two widely dissimilar purposes. The reproduction of these sketches in the present form appears to be warranted by a growing demand for information concerning the process of brewing of which one of the two essays here referred to c

The writer of an historical essay dealing with the origin of the art of brewing, even in countries of comparatively recent civilization, cannot escape the necessity of taking into account a certain element of mythical obscurity, calculated to throw a legendary glamour around and about the introduction of a beverage, the invention of which has been ascribed by the popular imagination of ancient times to certain benevolent gods, either male or female, according to the mythological systems of the d

The first authentic record of the existence of a public brewery dates back to 1637, so far as Massachusetts Bay, and to 1638, so far as Rhode Island is concerned; the former brewery was the result of the personal enterprise of Captain Sedgwick, the latter a communal creation of Roger Williams’ nascent colony, a combined brew-house and tavern, placed under the supervision of Sergeant Baulston. These were not the first brewers, however, for, some time before either of them was mentioned, the licen

[2] The old German night-watchman’s hourly song began with the announcement of the hour of the night and the admonition to guard fire and light. Naturally enough, the rapid growth of brewing suggested to Governor Kieft the expediency of levying a tax upon beer, and he imposed this all the more readily because, in consequence of the Indian War which he had provoked by a “shocking massacre of savages,” the treasury was totally depleted. In 1644, he levied a tax of three guilders upon every tun of

It may interest the reader to learn that beer, in those days, was made either of malted barley, wheat or oats, and that whenever there was a scarcity of any of these cereals, the lawmakers usually forbade the malting of it. Here, as in the New England colonies, the law provided for three grades of beer: the first grade requiring six bushels of malt for every hogshead; the second, four bushels; the third, two bushels. Complaints about the quality of beer were sometimes investigated by a court com

The evil effects of this policy must have become manifest almost instantaneously for as early as 1713 Governor Gordon deplores the decadence of brewing and the almost total discontinuance of the cultivation of hops and barley. After various futile experiments to remedy the evil the lawmakers in 1722 imposed a duty upon molasses, primarily to discourage the manufacture of rum, and enacted several laws designed to encourage the brewing of beer made of grain (not necessarily barley) and of hops. On

A double discrimination is here made in favor of malt liquors, viz., one in explicit terms, permitting the sale of strong beer only, and an implied one in the clause which excludes debts for wines and strong waters (not for beer) from the list of obligations legally pleadable. The fact is that beer was considered an indispensable part of every regular meal. Among the “staple commodities” sought to be encouraged by law, in 1658, we find hops and wine; the premium on the latter being ten thousands

The per capita production of malt liquors in the States named (the total amount produced being 5,754,737 gallons) amounted to almost one and one-fourth gallons, or, to be precise, to 4.98 quarts. This does not include what in the Digest is styled ancient fermented liquors, made of honey—the old German meth, here called metheglin and mead—of which considerable quantities are said to have been produced and consumed by private families. Surely, this is a gratifying development of a new industry wit

“As this consignment proved to be the first movement towards a great transformation, leading to a change in the habits of the population, inasmuch as it affected extensive commercial interests, abolishing numerous small businesses, and in their place calling into existence great industrial undertakings, employing millions of dollars as capital, the circumstance of its introduction, unimportant in itself as it may appear, assumes the significance of an epoch in the history of culture that brings

The entire poem is undoubtedly familiar to every lover of drinking-songs. In it the poet describes all the manipulations incidental to the cultivation of barley, from the planting of the grain to the reaping of it; and also all the numerous and manifold operations to which the ripe cereal is subjected after it has left the farm and passed into the hands of the maltster. The concluding process of malting, described in the quoted lines, has done its work, when John Barleycorn turns up in this brew

[5] Multiplied by four, these figures give present output. The steam required in this brewery for all the operations already described, and others still to be spoken of, is generated by eight colossal boilers, each five and a half feet in diameter, and containing fifty-six four-inch tubes. They are of the horizontal return tubular type, fitted with patent furnaces and water arches, and rated at 130 horse-power, each. This boiler plant is really of double the capacity needed, and, hence, only one

In California, in former years, the hops were largely picked by Chinamen, but since the labor movement, which culminated in the exclusion of Chinese immigration, has brought the employment of such labor into disfavor, the majority of planters hire other help, and Chinamen are now but rarely seen in the hop-yards. In Washington, and to some extent also in Oregon, the hops are mostly picked by Indians from British Columbia. They cross Puget Sound in their canoes, bringing all their women and child

Statistical exhibits show that the consumption of malt in our country is proportionately as large as that of most beer-producing countries; and, necessarily, the cultivation of barley in the United States is in proportion thereto. We have this advantage over England, that we need not draw upon foreign countries for any part of our supply of barley, except when a particularly fine grade of grain is desired, such, for instance, as our neighbors on the St. Lawrence raise. In case of necessity, we m