Land afterwards the brev'mrium ; which latter 
name imports, that the old office was abridg- 
ed, or rather that this collection is a kind 
ot' abridgment of all the prayers. 
BREA! ATOR, an officer under the east- 
ern empire, whose business it was to write 
and translate briefs. At Rome those are still 
called breviators, or abbreviators, who dic- 
tate and draw up the pope’s briefs. 
BRKV1BUS A ROTO LIS I.IBERANDIS, a. 
writ or command to a sheriff, •'to deliver to 
1 his successor, the county, with the appurte- 
nances, and the rolls, w rits, and other things 
•to his office belonging. 
BREVIER, among printers, a small kind 
of type, or letter, between nonpareil and 
bourgeois. 
BREWING, the art of making beer or 
| ah'. The art of brewing is undoubtedly a 
i part of chemistry, and depends on fixed and 
I invariable principles. These principles have 
j never yet been thoroughly investigated, and 
, on that account a just and certain theory has 
i not been obtained. We shall, however, give 
the best rules, as far as practical observation 
[ and experience have hitherto gone, for the 
j information of those who have not had the 
opportunity of attending to the subject. 
Malt liquor is essentially composed of \va- 
j ter, the soluble parts of malt and hops, and 
of yeast. There are several kinds of malt, 
; which are distinguished by their colour, and 
the colour depends upon the mode of malting 
and drying. Whether the pale or the brown 
malt is used, it must be coarsely ground, or 
bruised between rollers, which is rather to 
be preferred. 
The next consideration in brewing is the 
quality of the water to be employed ; and 
here soft water is universally allowed to be 
preferable to hard, both for the purposes of 
mashing and fermentation. Transparency 
i is however more easily obtained by the use 
of hard than soft water. But it is not well 
adapted to the brewing of porter, or such 
beers as require a fulness of palate, as in the 
London brewery, and some country situa- 
tions. The purity of water is determined by 
its lightness ; and in this respect, distilled 
water only can claim any material degree of 
perfection. Rain-water is the purest of all 
naturally produced ; but having once de- 
- Scended to the surface of the earth, it is liable 
to a variety of intermixtures unfavourable to 
the purposes of brewing. With regard to 
others, though a matter of considerable im- 
portance, no precise rule can be laid down. 
Where there is liberty of choice, a preference 
should doubtless be given to that water, 
which from natural purity is equally free 
from saline substances and vegetable putre- 
faction, has a soft fulness upon the palate, is 
totally flavourless, inodorous, and colourless ; 
whence it is the better prepared for the re- 
ception and retention of such qualities as 
brewing is to communicate. 
The first step in the process of brewing is 
mashing, which is performed in a large cir- 
cular wooden vessel, shallow in proportion 
to its extent, and furnished with a false bot- 
tom, pierced with small holes, and moveable 
or fixed a few inches above the real bottom. 
There are two-side openings in the interval 
between the real and false bottom ; to one 
is fixed a pipe for the purpose of conveying 
water into the tun, and the other for drawing 
the liquor out of it. The malt is to be st*ew- 
B 11! WING. 
ed evenly over the false bottom of the same 
tun, and then by means of the side pipe, a 
proper quantity of hot wateris introduced from 
the upper copper. The water rises up through 
the malt, or as it is called, the grist, and 
when the whole quantity is introduced, the 
mashing begins, the object of which is to ef- 
fect a perfect mixture ot the malt with the 
water, so that the soluble parts may be ex- 
tracted by it: for this propose, the grist is 
incorporated with the water by means of iron 
rakes, and then the mass is beaten and agi- 
tated bv long fiat wooden poles resembling 
oars, which are either worked by the hand 
or by machinery connected with the steam- 
engine or some other moving power, \vhen 
the mashing is completed, the tun is covered 
in to prevent the escape ot the heat, and the 
i whole is suffered to remain still, in order that 
! the insoluble parts may, separate from the 
| liquor: the side hole is then opened, and the 
clear wort allowed to run otf, slowly at first, 
but more rapidly as it becomes fine, into the 
lower or boiling copper. 
The chief thing in mashing is the temper- 
ature of the mash, which depends on the heat 
of water, and on the state of the malt. It 
the water was let in upon, the grist boiling 
hot, the starch which it contains would be 
dissolved and converted into a gelatinous 
substance, in which all the other parts of the 
malt, and most of the water, would he en- 
tangled, beyond the possibility of recovery 
by any after process. The most eligible 
temperature appears to be from 185° to 190° 
of Fahrenheit : for the first mashing the heat 
of the water must be somewhat below this 
temperature, and lower in proportion to 
the dark colour of the malt made use of ; 
for pale malt, the water may be 180°, but 
for brown, it ought not to be more than 170 '. 
The wort of the first mashing is always by 
much the richest in saccharine matter ; but 
to exhaust the malt, a second and a third 
mashing is required, in which the water may 
be safely raised to 190° or upwards. The 
proportion of wort to be obtained from each 
bushel of malt, depends entirely on the pro- 
posed strength of the liquor. It is said that 
25 or 30 gallons of good table beer may be 
taken from .each bushel of malt. For ale 
and porter of the superior kinds, only the 
produce of the first mashing, or six or eight 
gallons is to be employed. Brewers make 
use of an instrument called a saechrometer, 
to ascertain the strength and goodness oi the 
wort. This instrument is a kind ot hydro- 
meter, and shews the specific gravity of the 
wort, rather than the exact quantity of sac- 
charine matter which it contains. 
YVe now come to the boiling and hopping ; 
and if only one kind of liquor is made, the 
produce of the three mashings, is to he mix- 
ed together ; but if both ale and table-beer 
are required, the wort of the first, or of the 
first and second mashings is appropriated to 
the ale, and the remainder is set aside for the 
beer. All the wort destined for the same 
liquor, after it has run from the tun, is trans- 
ferred to the large lower copper, and mixed 
with a certain proportion of hops. The bet- 
ter the wort, the more 'hops are required. 
In private families, a pound of hops is ge- 
nerally used to every bushel of malt : but 
in public breweries, a much smaller propor- 
tion is deemed sufficient. When both ale 
and table-beer are brewed from the same 
'26g 
malt, the usual practice is to put the whole 
quantity of hops in the ale wort, which hav- 
ing been boiled some time, are to he trans- 
ferred to the beer wort, and with it to be 
again boiled. 
’When the hops are mixed with the wort 
in the copper, the liquor is made to boil, and 
the best practice is to keep it boiling as last 
as possible till upon taking a little of the 
liquor out, it is found to be full of small 
flakes like those of curdled soap. The boiling 
copper is in common breweries uncovered ; 
but in many on a very large scale, it is titl- 
ed with a steam-tight cover, from the centre 
of which passes a pipe, that terminates by 
several branches in the upper or mashing 
copper : the steam, therefore, produced by 
the boiling, instead of being wasted, is let 
into the cold water, and thus raises it very 
near! v to the temperature required tor mash- 
ing, besides impregnating it very sensibly 
with the essential oil of the hops, in which 
the flavour resides. 
When the liquor is boiled, it is discharged 
into a number of coolers, or shallow tubs, in 
which it remains until it becomes sufficiently 
cool to be submitted to fermentation. It is 
necessary that the process of cooling should 
be .carried on as expeditiously as possible, 
particularly in hot weather, and for this rea- 
son, the coolers in the great brewhouses are 
very shallow. Liquor made from pale malt, 
and which is intended for immediate drink- 
ing need not be cooled lower than 7S 
or 80 degrees, of course this kind of beer 
may be brewed almost in the hottest wear 
ther ; but beer brewed from brown malt, 
and intended to be kept, must be cooled to 
65 or 70 degrees, before it is put into a state 
of fermentation. Hence the spring and au- 
tumn have ever been deemed the most fa- 
vourable for the manufacture of the best malt: 
liquor. 
\Y r e now come to the tunning and barrel- 
ling: from the coolers the. liquor is to be 
transferred into the working tun, and with it 
is to be mixed a gallon of yeast to four bar- 
rels of beer. In four or five hours the fer- 
mentation begins, and it requires from 18 or 
20 hours to 48, before the wort is lit to be 
put into barrels. In the barrels the fermen- 
tation again goes on, and during a few days, 
a copious discharge of yeast takes place from 
the bung-hole, care must he taken that the 
barrels are carefully filled up every day with 
fresh liquor: this discharge gradually be- 
comes less, and in about a week it ceases ; 
at which time the bung-hole is closed, and 
the liquor is fit for use after it has stood a 
certain time according to its strength, and 
the temperature at which it has been fer- 
mented. 
Brewing, among distillers, denotes the 
method of extracting the more soluble parts 
of vegetables with hot water, and thus pro- 
curing a solution or decoction fitted for vi- 
nous fermentation. In this sense brewing is 
a necessary step towards distillation. A fer- 
mentable solution, fit for yielding a spirit, 
is obtainable from any vegetable, under pro- 
per management. Thus sugar, treacle, and 
other inspissated vegetable juices, which to>- 
taliy unite with water, are better adapted to 
fermentation, than roots, fruits, or herbs, in 
substance, the grains, or even the malt it- 
self; all which dissolve, but very imperfect- 
ly, iu hot water. Malt is, however, general- 
