BREWING
BREWING is the art of preparing an exhilarating or intoxicating beverage by means of a process of fermentation. In the modern acceptation of the word, brewing is the operation of preparing beer and ales from any farinaceous grain (chiefly from barley), which is first malted and ground, and its fermentable substance extracted by warm water. This infusion is evaporated by boiling, hops having been added to preserve it. The liquor is then fermented.
The art was known and practised by the Egyptians many hundred years before the Christian era, and after wards by the Greeks, Romans, and ancient Gauls, from whom it has been handed down to us. All countries, whether civilized or savage, have, in every age, prepared an intoxicating drink of some kind. In the second book of Herodotus, written about 450 B.C., we are told that the Egyptians, being without vines, made wine from corn ; but as the grape is mentioned so frequently in Scripture and elsewhere as being most abundant there, and no record exists as to the vine having been destroyed, we must conclude that the historian was only partially acquainted with the productions of that most fertile country. Pliny (Natural History, xxii. 82) informs us that the Egyptians made wine from corn, and gives it the name of zythum which in the Greek would mean drink from barley; and Hellanicus, telling of the introduction of wine at Plinthium, a city of Egypt, states : "Hence the Egyptians are thought to derive their love and use of this liquor, which they thought so necessary for human bodies, that they invented a wine made from barley." The Greeks, who derived the greater part of their civilization from the Egyptians, obtained from them also the knowledge of artificial fermentation, the art of brewing in fact, and at a very early period. We find it mentioned, for example, in the writings of Archilochus, the Parian poet and satirist, who flourished about 700 B.C., that the Greeks of his day were already acquainted with the art.
The cervisia of Pliny evidently takes its name from Ceres, the goddess of corn. Plautus calls it Cerealis liquor, that is, liquor used at the solemn festival of that goddess. The art of malting and use of beer are supposed to have been introduced into Britain by the Romans. That barley was known to the latter is evident from Virgil, who uses it in the plural form, hordea, as we do the word oats ; and Pliny tells of the hordcarii gladiatorcs, a kind of fencers, whose sustenance was barley. Beer and vine gar were the ordinary beverages of the soldiers under Julius Caesar. The latter was made very strong, and was drunk diluted with water when on the march. Beer being so suitable to the climate, and so easily made by an agri cultural people with plenty of corn, it was gladly welcomed, and soon became the national beverage. Previous to this, the usual drinks of the ancient Britons were water, milk, and mead / an intoxicating drink made from honey). After the expulsion of the Romans from Britain, the Saxons subdued the natives and learned from them the art of brewing.
Africa have made for ages, and still make, a fermented drink of beer from the seed of the millet (Sorghum vulgare), which is first subjected to a malting process in all essential particulars identical with our own, The seed is first induced to germinate by covering it in a warm place with moistened mats of grass, and the sprouting is then stopped by the appli cation of heat. After simmering for some time in hot water, the malted grain is set aside to ferment in the sun fragments of a dried succulent plant having been stirred in to play the part of yeast and start the fermentation. The scum which rises to the surface during the fermentation is skimmed away from time to time by ladles made of grass stems spread out and loosely woven together at the bowl. When the fermentation is complete the beer is poured through a mat strainer, shaped and tasselled very much like an inverted night-cap, into the store vessel, which is made of thickly and firmly woven grass. The natives of Nubia, Abyssinia, and other parts of Africa also make an intoxicating drink of great power called bousa, from the flour of the teff (Poa abyssinica), and from the durrha or millet (Sorghum vulgare), much esteemed by the natives, and perferred by many to palm or date wine, the common intoxicating drink in tropical countries. According to Mungo Park, the natives of Africa also make a beverage from the seed of the spiked or eared soft-grass (Holcus spicatus). The Russian drink kvass or quass, a thick, sour beverage, not unlike bousa, is made of barley and rye flour, mixed with water and fermented. Formerly, the spruce-fir, birch, maple, and ash trees were tapped, and their juice used in England,—the first two, indeed, till within the last fifty years. Koumiss, the drink of the Tatar race, is the fermented milk of their mares. The Chinese beverage, sam-shee, is made from rice. This is not only intoxicating, but, like absinthe, peculiarly mischievous in its permanent effects. In South America a favourite drink is palque, the fermented juice of the Amercian aloe (Agave americana). Guarapo is the juice of the sugar-cane, which,
when fermented, forms the common drink of the negro