Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1882-07-30
LAGER BEER.
Row 1t 4. Made and Aduiterated.


Of New York brewer.
"There is not much more than one
third of the beer drunk In winter that
IS consumed IN summer. But the brew
ers prefer that kind of trade which they
can employ all the year round. That is
why Coney island is OF very little adj
vantage to brewer. These large estab-
hshments have to be run all winter and
the men to be paid their wages. Beer
brewing In the Southern States has not
been success on account of the cost OF
Ice, which does not form III that eli
mate. You must keep your beer at low
temperatures IN order to destroy GER
tain diseased ferments which would
spoil it, and which only develop above a
certain temperature. That would make
the beer sour"
. What Is yeast ?"
well, here's our chemist. He will
tell you that yeast is probably the low
est form of organized life. It is a plant
or spore, invisible but floating In the at
mosphere. Here is photograph of
some yeast magnifed thousands of times.
You see that it is apparently little clus-
tiers of eggs, like the roe of shad. Now
look at 1T through the microscope, and
each one of these little eggs becomes
half as big as pea. There is cavity
au the middle, as if there was stomach
there. Brewers use yeast in preference
to several ferments they might use.
The refuse yeast Is given away. Other
brewers often come to borrow yeast,
wishing to change their yeast, as they
say. 1t is like breeding with certain
animals which finally lose their mettle,
md you introduce new blood from your
neighbor's stock. So it is with yeast.
AS it Is organized life, you want to
quicken it from another brewery. We
use about one gallon of yeast to barrel
of beer. When it has fermented the beer
to the best of its ability, the yeast set.
ties down upon shavings of clean beech
put IN the bottom of the big tuns.
There it perches like chickens going to
roost, and there is man-hole in each
one of those tuns or Casks big enough
to let man put his head and shoulders
inside. He removes the yeast and the
shavings and thoroughly cleanses the
cask, and then the next beer is let into
it by hose"
"The only difficulty with New York
beer" said my friend, lis that In the
hot weather, when there is O big de-
mand for it, it Is furnished too new.
Beer ought to be kept three months,
and we try to keep it that long. But
with four or five hundred trade custom
ers and a thirsty city, they draw on the
beer mercilessly in July and August.
The yeast ought to be thoroughly out Of
the beer before it is drunk. There is
only about 4 per cent. of alcohol in
beer and about 40 per cent. of alcohol
in whisky. That accounts for the pop
ularity of lager beer. It IS fair com
promise between total abstinence and
alcohol. 1t especially seems to suit the
zone of temperature corresponding to
our Western and Middle States"
why do you use this barley instead
of wheat?"
'Any grain will make beer" said the
brewer "Wheat will make weiss beer.
We use barley because we find it not
only the cheapest grain, but it develops
into diastaste and starch most thorough
ly. This grain of barley you see now is
nothing but starch and very little
diastaste. The diastaste attacks the
starch and turns it into sugar. Then
the yeast has such a gluttony for sugar
that it makes carbonic acid gas and al.
cohol of it. The hops are merely put
into the beer to give it the tonic quail
ties. Hops now cost about 90 cents
q pound, and we use exclusively Ameri-
can hops, which are profitable to the
producer if he gets II cents pound
for them. We are now the greatest hop
producing country In the world, and
send enormous quantities of hops to
England. Quite an item in the brew
er's list is horses and wagons. A good
pair of brewers horses come from Ohio
and have some Norman or Flemish stock
in them, and cost about $500. Our
drivers and brewers are generally Bavar-
ians, though Americans are coming into
the business since it has become such a
prominent feature of trade. Myself and
my partner were originally produce
merchants. The leading brewers of
New York arrived in this country poor
men,"
"Now," said I, "let me run over
these points and see if I know them.
Beer is barley sugar fermented by yeast
and made bitter and tonicy by hops.
The yeast settles and is thrown away
the mash, after infusing the boiling
water, is drawn off and sold for manure.
The caroonic acid released by the action
of the yeast on the sugar is what makes
the beer lively. The cold required in
the ripening of the beer il TO keep down
poisonous ferments which have a tend
ency to develop. Hop 40 not make
yeast but yeast has to core rom seed
aud to propagate by the malt it feed s
on"
Nearly correct" spoke UP the chem
LIST, .'and let me tell you, while they are
assailing the chemist, that he is slowly
moving the world. Mustard is now made
artifcially. So is indigo. Chemistry is
a mere child yet, and perhaps as big 9
problem as it has got is this very ques
ton of yeast. The Romans used yeast
and we think it is form of organized
life. and that we don't know much about
it except that like some furious maggot
it attacks sugar and converts it into al.
cohol."
Quill Pens.
An IN