Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1885-08-14
HOW LAGER BEER is BREWED.
Ahe Process Described i'm an Inter-
esting Manner-4The Part Ice
Plays.

Theoretically, it's very easy to brew
beer. You get your malt, grind it up,
Sur 1t with hot water, strain it of 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 wisdom rather, that time and ex-
f. perience only can bring, to know
how long to stir, how much extract
to use, and how long to cool and
fast to ferment, and how long to
keep. 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
cheap as the barley. But he shows you
the large watts where the barley is stepped,
the long floors on which the soaked,
swollen grain is spread out until II attains
a certain growth There are the kilns in
which it is slowly dried when it has suffi
GENTLY sprouted, and then it is malt,
ready for brewing This he only ex-
plains, because, as stated, most brewers
found it cheaper to buy the malt than to
malt the barley.
brewery the malt is thoroughly cleaned
of every impurity, and the little sprout it
got in the malt house is broken off by in
tlicately beautiful machinery. Then it
drops one floor to the mill, and is GROUND
to sweet, white -four. And now the
brewing proper begins. Into large cir
cular tub of sheet iron, with a capacity OF
GOO gallons-the mash tub-it slides, and
a thick copper pipe supplies hot water.
Here ingenious machinery stirs it round
how long is the brewers secret. The
color of the beer depends much on this,
and no two brewers brew beer of exactly
the same shade 1t varies from a pale
amber to rich dark brown.
The extract that drips from the mash
tub after several hours OF stirring is the
pure extract of malt. 1t has a swedish
taste, naturally, for the duty of the mash
tub is to convert all, or nearly all, of the
starch in the barley into sugar. The resi-
due OF grain hulls, etc, is run out of the
tub and sold to the cattle dealers. The
extract drips into large kettle on the
next floor below. Here 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 it is beer,
but, of course, not the lager beer that
cheers the weary at five cents glass. 1t
has not yet fermented. From the kettle,
whose capacity is 400 barrels. it is run
into large, shallow reservoir, on cool
floor, where constant current OF fresh
air cools it off. 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
But the cool air alone is not enough, |
in summer time, and so the !
beer flows over 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 enor- |
nous watts 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 a fine ammonia ice machine !
On the ground floor of the bravery. The !
coils are everywhere covered with coat
ny OF ice an inch thick. The tempera-
.ure OF the deepest cellar, where lies the |
beer that has been fermenting between /
5wo and three months, and is consequent
y ready for market, is several degrees
below the freezing point. Here it is
lrawn off into small kegs, and an endless
chain hoists the keg up the forty feet to |
daylight in an instant.