Page:A Practical Treatise on Brewing (4th ed.).djvu/51

Rh during sultry summer weather, they can never, with certainty, calculate upon producing good, soft, tenacious iron, technically called No. 1.; it is much more generally the white, hard, inferior kind, called No. 3., or a mixture of Nos. 2. and 3. Now, in such circumstances, it will be found that the iron was melted during a thunder-storm, or when the air was highly charged with electricity. In these cases the ore shall be of the best quality, and all the manipulations belonging to the melting be carefully looked after, and even a much greater charge of coke be employed (the dernier resort of the melter), when apprehensive of hard, inferior iron, yet, notwithstanding all these precautions, the yield of iron is of the quality No. 3. The operating cause we consider to be electricity. The result of my observations, in different parts of the kingdom (and they have been pretty widely extended), is, that where the fermenting tuns have been placed upon baked Wooden bearers, and supported upon brick or wooden tiers, or columns, and every other precaution used to insulate the vessels as much as possible, the fermentations proceed regularly and progressively, and the beer turns out good, bright, and sound, and will keep so; but when the tuns are placed on, or embedded in the earth, or when electric action is induced by a chain of copper or metal pipes, making a complete galvanic circle, the fermentations are very irregular, and do not go