The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1885-08-05
HOW LAGER BEER IS aREwEp.



theoretically, it's very easy to brew beer.
You get your malt, grind it up, stir it with
hot water, strain it off, and boil this extract
with hops; cool it off, let it ferment and
drink it. Practically, it isn't quite so easy.
1t requires knowledge, or a wisdom rather,
that time and experience can only bring, to
know how long to stir, how much extract to
use, and how much hops how long to boil
and how long to cool. These are secrets
which every brewer keeps to himself very
distinctly. But he will very cheerfully
show you the brewery. The malt house is
not in use this year, because he can buy the
malt as cheaply as the barley. But he shows
you the large watts where the barley is steep
sd, the long floors on which the soaked,
swollen grain is spread out until it attains a
certain growth. There are tho kilns in which
it is slowly dried when it has sufficiently
sprouted, and then it is malt, ready for
brewing. This he only explains, because,
rs stated, most brewers find it cheaper to
buy the malt than to malt the barley.
Away up in the topmost story of the brew.
cry, the malt is thoroughly cleaned of every
impurity, and the little sprout it got in the
malthouse is broken off by intricate, beau
tiful machinery. Then it drops one floor
to the mill, and is ground to sweet, white
-four. And now the brewery proper begins.
Into huge, circular tub of sheet-iron, with
a capacity of 900 gallons-the mash tub-it
slides, and thick copper pipe supplies
hot water. Here ingenious machinery stirs
it round and round-how long is the brew
er's secret. The color of the beer depends
much on this, and no two brewers brew
beer of exactly the same shade. 1t varies
from pale amber to n rich dark brown.
The extract that drips from the mash tub,
after several hours of stirring, is the pure
extract of malt. 1t has sweetish taste,
naturally, for the duty of the mash tub is te
convert all, or nearly all, of the starch in thu
barley into sugar. The residue OF grain
bulls, etc., is run out of the tub and sold to
the cattle dealers. The extract drips into q
huge kettle on the next floor below. Hore
the hops, first cut up into smaller pieces,
are thrown in, and the two are boiled. The
brewer knows how much hops and how
long it boils. When he stops boiling 1t is
beer, but, of course, not the lager beer that
cheers the weary at five cents q glass. II
has not yet fermented. From the kettle
whose capacity is 400 barrels. it is run into
large shallow reservoir ON q cool floor,
where constant current of fresh dir cools
it of. The famous Muenchen beer is said
to owe much of its reputation to the cool air
that comes fresh, strong and fragrant from
the neighboring Hartz mountains.
But the cool air alone is not enough, ss-
pecially in summer time, and so the beer
flows oyes long coil of bright tubes, which
are kept cold by constant stream of water
In some breweries strong brine runs
through the tubes. Completely cooled, the
beer now runs into the enormous WITS that
rest in the three vaulted cellars, one beneath
the other, the third being forty feet below
the surface. Thick coils of pipe run
through the cellars, through which brine
carries the cold produced by fine ammo
mia ice machine on the ground floor of tn,
brewery. The coils are everywhere covered
with coating of ice an inch thick. Tn,
temperature of the deepest cellar, wher,
lies the beer that has been fermenting be-
tween two and three months, and is conse
quently ready for market, is several degrees
below freezing point. Here 1t is drawn of
into small kegs and an endless chain hoist
the kegs up the forty feet to daylight in OF
instant. baltimore Sun.