Page:A Practical Treatise on Brewing (4th ed.).djvu/254

238 superiority in their mode of brewing, as from the new mode of constructing and arranging the utensils employed in the process, recently introduced into this country. These have a decided tendency to produce acidity, and also to prevent all in the fermentation of the beer. This has been fully explained in former parts of this work, and will be adverted to.

Bavarian beer seldom exceeds in the specific gravity of the worts 1060, water being 1000; this is about the same as that of our Indian beer, which should be attenuated when the fermentation is fully completed, down to 1006 or 1008 specific gravity by the excise instrument, or from 3 to 4 by Long’s. This degree of attenuation may, no doubt, be obtained by the Bavarian method; but it may be very doubtful whether worts of twice that gravity or more, which are much used in this country, could be sufficiently attenuated by that process, at least in any reasonable time. As Liebig, however, does not give us any information either respecting gravities or attenuations, we have no data to go by. He merely states that the beer is better, contains more alcohol, and is invariably superior in quality and stability to any other whatever, thus leaving the process merely a matter of conjecture.

With regard to the quantity of alcohol contained in any fermented liquor, it can only be ascertained by distillation, or some similar process, and the