Page:A Practical Treatise on Brewing (4th ed.).djvu/185

Rh either of the worts or gyle-tuns to the solar rays, or even to much light.

Irregularity or want of uniformity in the process of fermentation, as before stated, proceeds from such apparently trifling causes as to make it quite impossible to enumerate or describe them. We may rest assured, however, that if we succeed in any one fermentation, every failure in our future processes must proceed from want of method, bad manipulation, or other impeding causes, which may be traced, and may unquestionably be removed.

But let us dismiss all pretended secrets, as well as adages, new hard names, old saws, and dogmas, which we are sorry to see still quoted as rules for guiding the maltster and the brewer, although these dogmas still appear in works written professedly for the purpose of giving scientific practical information, yet do they abound in such high-ﬂown, mystical language, as would not only, by their obscurity, puzzle the reader to comprehend, but the authors themselves to explain, were they so required. Let us have done with all these sources of error and confusion; and instead of looking upon brewing as an art which proceeds without obedience to regular laws—differing, therefore, from every other chemical process—let us endeavour with the advice and assistance of men of science, to trace out the laws by which this art must be governed: and thus effectually remove the