INDUSTRIES 



The large malt stores are capable of con- 

 taining upwards of 1 20,000 quarters. From 

 them the malt is conveyed by the Jacob's 

 ladder already mentioned to the mill, where 

 it is carefully screened before it passes over 

 the rollers to be crushed. The malt mills 

 are fitted with SchaefFer's magnetic apparatus, 

 which attracts every particle of iron and 

 steel which finds its way into the malt, this 

 being an invention with which Messrs. Bar- 

 clay, Perkins & Co. were the first brewers to 

 experiment. The malt after being thus 

 cleaned is passed through the crushing 

 machines at the rate of sixty quarters per 

 hour, and when converted into ' grist ' is 

 conveyed by another Jacob's ladder to the 

 brewhouse. 



The mashing process is then commenced. 

 The water used for this is drawn not from 

 the Thames, but from an artesian well, 438 

 feet deep, the water stratum of which passes 

 underneath the river, as is proved by the fact 

 that the pumping of this well has been found 

 to have a perceptible eflFect upon the water 

 in a similar well on the opposite bank used by 

 the City of London Brewery. In addition to 

 the water from this well, Messrs. Barclay, 

 Perkins & Co. use a large quantity supplied 

 by the Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks 

 Company. 



The five coppers used in the brewhouse 

 are those which were in use in 1850, three 

 of them are still employed for stout and 

 the remaining two for ales. The coppers 

 first heat the water for extracting the 

 saccharine matter from the malt, and after- 

 wards are used to boil the malt extract ob- 

 tained from this process. They are heated 

 by Juckes' furnaces, which are supplied with 

 coals by an ingenious invention of Mr. Beck- 

 with, the chief engineer of the brewery. 

 The invention in question is a carrier some- 

 what on the principle of the Jacob's ladder, 

 which conveys the coals a distance of nearly 

 50 feet at the rate of 12 tons per hour. 



Until within the last few years the mash- 

 tuns were made of oak out of some vats that 

 were in existence when Mr. Thrale took the 

 brewery. In their place are now six tuns 

 constructed of iron with copper domes, three 

 with 130 quarters' capacity and three with 

 66. This substitution of metal for wood as 

 the material of which the vessels intended to 

 hold large quantities of liquid are made has 

 been dictated by the non-absorbent qualities 

 of the metal, wood having been found, even 

 with the greatest attention to cleanliness, to 

 have more or less effect upon the brewing. 



The hot water is conducted into these 

 mash-tuns from the bottom and percolating 



upwards through a false bottom mixes with 

 the malt. Both are then stirred by means of 

 a mashing machine set in motion by the 

 steam engine, and the wort, as the mixture is 

 now called, is drawn off. A second, some- 

 times a third, supply of water is required be- 

 fore all the fermentable matter is extracted 

 from the malt. The hops are lifted to the 

 coppers by another elevator. Nearly two 

 and a half tons of hops are daily used in this 

 brewery. As soon as the infusion of the 

 wort and the hops is completed, the wort is 

 drained off to the hop-back, a large iron 

 vessel measuring 6,000 cubic feet and hold- 

 ing 1,000 barrels. 



The wort is next passed into the coolers, 

 large shallow vessels, in which it is cooled by 

 the air which is wafted over the open sides of 

 the loft and is then run over the refrigerators. 

 The cool wort is now fermented with yeast 

 and the final stage of the process of brewing 

 is reached, when, the fermentation completed, 

 the yeast is separated from the porter, and the 

 latter is racked from the brewery into barrels, 

 hogsheads and butts to be rolled into the vast 

 stores until ready for delivery. Formerly it 

 was the custom to keep the beer in immense 

 vats, and there were here for many years six 

 of these vats, some of which were said to be 

 the largest in England. One of these had a 

 holding capacity of 112,536 gallons, or 

 nearly three times as much as that of the 

 famous Heidelberg tun, which held 44,100 

 gallons of wine. But the days of 'vatted' 

 porter are over, and these great vessels have 

 one by one been broken up. 



The finishing stages of the ale brewing 

 are carried on in another building, the wort 

 travelling from the coppers already described 

 over one of the suspension bridges which 

 cross the public thoroughfares. A similar 

 process to that employed with the porter 

 wort is then undergone. The ale wort is 

 passed through the refrigerating room and 

 then descends to the fermenting department, 

 which contains twenty-one tuns, with an 

 average content of from 100 to 380 barrels. 

 In most of them the yeast is skimmed off the 

 top of the ale by means of a screw tray, over 

 which is a skimmer revolving on its own 

 axis, lowered at pleasure by the cog-wheels 

 and swivel. This contrivance is used with a 

 few of the fermenting tuns in the porter 

 brewery. When the ale wort has reached a 

 certain stage it is drawn off into other 

 cleansing tanks below. Of these there are 

 fourteen, constructed of slate, and each 

 holding no barrels. The fermentation of 

 the ale is then finished off in smaller slate 

 cleansing vessels, of which there are over two 



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