SECTION XVIII.
An enquiry into what may be, at all times, a proper stock of Beer, and the management of it in the cellars.
Thebusiness of a brewer is not confined to the mere manufacture of his commodity; his concerns, as a trader, deserve no less regard, and, in a treatise like this, should not be entirely omitted.
As it is a fault not to have a sufficient stock of beers it the cellars, to serve the customers, it is one also to have more than is needful. By the first of these errors, the beers would be generally new and ill disposed for precipitation; by the other, quantities of stale beer must remain, which, becoming hard, will at last turn stale, and be unfit for use, unless blended with new brewed beers, to their detriment. These faults, if continued, may in time affect a whole trade, and ought therefore carefully to be avoided. For these reasons, the whole quantity to be moved, or expected to be supplied from the brewer’s store cellars, during the space of one twelvemonth, should be calculated, as near as possible; half this quantity ought to be the stock kept up from November to May inclusive, and nearly one third part thereof be remaining in September. From hence a table may be formed, by which it will be easy, at one view, to know the quantitythat should be maintained at every season of the year, and to avoid almost every inconveniency, which otherwise must arise. Suppose, for example, the number of casks expected to be moved in a year, to be 320 butts, and 248 puncheons, the store cellars ought to be supplied, as to time and quantity, in the following proportion.
After beers have been started in the cellars, the casks should be well and carefully stopped down, as soon as the repelling force of fermentation is so much lessened, as not to be able to oppose this design. Otherwise the elastic air, which is the vivifying principle of the drink, being lost, it would become vapid, and flat; and if left a long time in this condition, perhaps grow sour.
It has already been observed, that cellars, in winter, are more hot than the exterior air by 10 degrees, and more cold in summer by 5 degrees. But besides this general difference, repositories of beer vary surprisingly in their temperature; from the nature of the soil in which they are built, from their exposition to the sun, or from other incidental causes. As heat is a very powerful agent in accelerating fermentation, it is by no means surprising, not only that some cellars do ripen drinks much sooner than others, but also that a difference is often perceived in the same cellar. The persons entrusted with the choice of beers, with which the customers are to be served, should not be satisfied to send out their guiles in the progressive order in which they were brewed, but ought, on every occasion, to note any alteration that happens in the drink, as this is doing justice both to the commodity, and to the consumer, who has a constant right to expect his beer in due order.