THE BREWING INDUSTRY IN IRELAND. 461 



Process of Brewing. 



While the essential principles of brewing are of the very simplest nature, 

 yet the modern processes are rather too complicated to be explained in an 

 article which is not of a technical nature. A short description of the 

 essential processes of brewing, however, may prove not uninteresting. 



The first step is to make the malt. Malting and brewing are totally 

 separate operations, and are often carried on as distinct businesses. Malt- 

 sters commonly make malt for brewers and distillers at a fixed charge per 

 quarter, but most brewers, and practically all Irish brewers, make at least 

 a portion, and some the whole, of the malt they use. Malting is carried 

 on very extensively in Ireland, and in addition to the thirty nme brewers 

 who all make malt, and a number of distillers, there are over thirty firms in 

 Ireland doing a large business in malting, many of whom, in addition to 

 supplying Irish brewers and distillers with malt, export large quantities to 

 England. Nearly all kinds of grain — wheat, oats, maize, etc. — may be, and 

 have been, used to make malt, but barley is -par excellence the malting grain, 

 and in Ireland barley is almost exclusively used. The bulk Df the barley 

 to be used for the entire malting season is usually bought towards the end 

 of September and during the months of October and November. The 

 barley should be of good colour (straw), plump in the body, well closed at 

 both ends, and with not too thick a skin. 



Before malting it is now usual to put the barley upon a kiln at a moderate 

 temperature of about ioo° F. for from 12 to 24 hours, 

 Drying the according to the condition of the barley. This drying 



Barley. process has become more necessary in recent years 



owing to the introduction of the steam threshing mill, 

 and the hurry farmers are in to rush the barley from the stooks into the 

 market. In former times, when the barley was threshed in the farmer's yard 

 with a hand-flail, or wath a one-horse machine, the barley was allowed to 

 stand for a few days in the stooks in the field, and was then carefully put 

 into hand stacks, where it remained for a considerable time and thus 

 became mellowed and matured. It was then put into large stacks in the 

 haggard, where it sometimes lay for months, continuing to improve and go 

 through the natural sweat. The modern kiln-drying is an endeavour to 

 imitate nature by taking the place of this natural sweat, and it is rendered 

 necessary by the changed conditions of harvesting already referred to. 

 The barley is allowed to stand for some time after being dried, and the 

 first step is then taken in the operation of malting, viz.. 

 Malting. putting the barley into a large cistern or steep where 



it is thoroughly soaked, the water being changed once 

 or twice while the barley is in the steep. This process in malting is a 

 forced vegetation, the object of which is to produce that saccharine matter 

 upon which the value of malt depends. The vegetation is forced as the 

 maltster cannot wait for the slow operation of nature ; hence, as a substitute 

 for the moisture of the earth the grain is immersed in water where a few 

 hours' infusion is equal to many days employed in the ordinary course of 

 vegetation. After the expiration of from 54 to 60 hours the water is 

 drawn off, and the barley which is now swollen and very soft is put into a 

 heap on the floor, or as maltsters term it, "couched." Here it stands for some 

 24 hours, after which it is spread out on the floor in a thick layer about 12 

 inches deep. The process of germination or sprouting now commences and 



