A Text-Book of the Science of Brewing

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. 1891 edition. Excerpt: ...tanneries, mills, and any concerns in which an abundance of fine organic dust is inevitable. Further enumeration of sources of contamination is unnecessary. It will suffice to say that although scrupulous cleanliness and the avoidance of all unnecessary infection should be strenuously enforced in all parts of the brewery, it is particularly on the coolers and refrigerators that attention in this respect should be unceasing. Organisms infecting brewings in the early stages are at any rate killed during boiling, and their direct deteriorating influence thereby checked; infection after the wort is pitched is not so dangerous as during cooling, for organisms and wild yeasts are checked and crowded out by the actively developing pitching yeast. But during cooling and refrigeration, the wort is in its most critical condition, and as this infection is to some extent inevitable during that process, every means should be taken to reduce it to its very lowest amount. But however careful we may be, we cannot altogether avoid infection during cooling and refrigeration, and assuming that by every available means all evitable infection has been excluded, there will yet be many organisms to deal with; and whether this irreducible minimum of organisms is to be of harm or not will depend upon two factors, the composition of the wort, and the vigour of the subsequent fermentation. The conditions under which a vigorous fermentation, so far as the yeast is concerned, is attainable, will be considered subsequently. So far as the relation of fermentation to the proportions of the carbohydrates, minerals, and other constituents is concerned, this has already been touched upon in the chapter on mashing, and will be treated again under fermentation. We will...