22 BREWING. [No. 



36. The kind of beer, for a labourer's family, that 

 is to say, the degree of strength, must depend on cir- 

 cumstances ; on the numerousness of the family ; on 

 the season of the year, and various other things. But, 

 generally speaking, beer half the strength of 'that men- 

 tioned in paragraph 25 will be quite strong enough ; 

 for that is, at least, one-third stronger than the farm- 

 house " small beer," which, however, as long experi- 

 ence has proved, is best suited to the purpose. A ju- 

 dicious labourer would probably always have some 

 ale in his house, and have small beer for the general 

 drink. There is no reason why he should not keep 

 Christmas as well as the farmer ; and when he is 

 mowing, reaping, or is at any other hard work, a 

 quart, or three pints, of really good fat ale a-day is 

 by no means too much. However, circumstances vary 

 so much with different labourers, that as to the sort of 

 beer, and the number of brewings, and the times of 

 brewing, no general rule can be laid down. 



37. Before I proceed to explain the uses of the se- 

 veral brewing utensils, I must speak of the quality of 

 the materials of which beer is made ; that is to say, 

 the malt, hops, and water. Malt varies very much 

 in quality, as, indeed, it must, with the quality of the 

 barley. When good, it is full of flour, and in biting 

 a grain asunder, you find it bite easily, and see the 

 shell thin and filled up-well with flour. If, it bite hard 

 and steely, the malt is bad. There is pale malt and 

 brown malt ; but the difference in the two arises 

 merely from the different degrees of heat employed 

 in the drying. The main thing to attend to is, the 

 quantity of flour. If the barley was bad ; thin, or 

 steely, whether from unripeness or blight, or any other 

 cause, it will not malt so well ; that is to say, it will 

 not send out its roots in due time; and a part of it 

 will still be barley. Then, the world is wicked enough 

 to think, and even to say, that there are maltsters who, 

 when they send you a bushel of malt, put a Little bar- 

 ley amongst it, the malt being taxed and the barley 

 not I Let us hope that this is seldom the case ; yet, 

 when we do know that this terrible system of taxation 



