Page:A Practical Treatise on Brewing (4th ed.).djvu/256

240 introduced into this country, is the multiplicity of the fermenting tuns requisite, and the time employed in the fermentation, which utensils would require the expenditure of a fortune for that department alone, and would also occupy many acres of ground, which, in one of our great establishments, would be a rather serious consideration. Liebig says that the Bavarian fermentation, from its being carried on under ground, and at much lower temperatures than ours, is on that account much less liable to get acidified, and he gives several reasons for that being the case; but I confess I am not chemist enough to understand the great advantages by which their practice is rendered superior to our own. It appears to me that the processes are similar in both countries, although differently conducted; and, to judge from the only statements laid before us, it does not appear that any advantage can be gained by so tedious and expensive an operation as the Bavarian. It is said by persons who have travelled in that country, that the beer in the common public-houses is generally very cloudy, and is also laxative, and consequently would not suit our coal-heavers or other hard workers.

Professor Liebig also says somewhere, that the excess of gluten left in beer is one great cause of its decay. We find by chemical analysis that there is but three per cent. of gluten in barley, and two per cent. of that disappears in the process of