Page:A Practical Treatise on Brewing (4th ed.).djvu/126

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110
FERMENTATION.

shut up as accurately as circumstances will permit, and fermentation is allowed to take its own course, until the yeast falls to the bottom; thus trusting the whole process to chance.

The beer so produced is invariably what is technically denominated foul or yeast-bitten, leaving a nasty disagreeable bitter on the palate; a taste to those unaccustomed to it quite nauseous. It also, like all foul beer, stupifies without exhilarating, and produces, especially amongst sedentary people, heart-burn and head-ache. Custom, however, has so reconciled this unwholesome beverage to the palates of the consumers, that the stupifying quality is thought to proceed rather from the strength of the beer, than from its foulness from the yeast improperly combined with it, or perhaps sometimes from narcotics improperly introduced during the process. We trust, however, that other brewers, by following a more healthy process, and thus producing a better and more healthy beverage, will be able to convince those who follow the above-mentioned unwholesome and erroneous mode of fermentation, that a more scientific process must be adopted.

Of Long and Short Fermentations.

We have always contended that long fermentations are more hazardous than the shorter processes, it being understood that the temperature of the