but whether it is the worse or no for brewing
beer is a dispute among brewers; and who's
to decide when brewers disagree. It stands
to reason that the quality of the water must
have more or less effect upon the quality
of beer; so, no doubt, the difference between
the beers of different places depends, for one
thing, on the kind of water they are brewed
from.

"Next, as to the hops. The hop-flower,
belonging to the vegetable creation, is made of
carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Besides, there's
a bitter extract in it, and likewise a drowsifying
sort of principle, something like what
there is in opium, called Humulin.

"Now for the malt. What is malt? Not
many of you, I suppose, are such Cockneys as
not to know that malt is barley, steeped in
water, laid out on a floor, let be there till it
is just about to sprout, and then dried on a
kiln, at a heat high or low, according to the
colour you want it to be; pale, or amber, or
brown. Here begin the chemical manœuvres
required to produce a pint of beer. Malting
is a process of chemistry that goes on in each
grain of barley inside of the husk. What are
the chemical ingredients of barley? Carbon,
oxygen, hydrogen, and a little nitrogen. Malt
has the same. But the difference between
barley and malt is, that the carbon, oxygen,
and hydrogen in the barley are in the shape of
starch; whereas, in the malt they are in the
state of sugar. In going to sprout, the barley
gets sweet. The starch in it changes into
sugar. Both sugar and starch have the same
proportions of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen;
twelve of carbon, ten of oxygen, and ten of
hydrogen, in each—that is to say, water and
charcoal. The difference between starch and
sugar is thought to depend on the carbon,
oxygen, and hydrogen in the one, being
ranged together in a different way from what
they are in the other. The 'ultimate
particles' of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, being
'grouped together,' as the phrase is, in one
way, form starch, and in another, sugar. So
with gum, and several other things, that have
the same elements—as chemists say—and in
the same proportions as sugar, but differ from
it in look and taste, and feel, and some other
properties. It seems as though, whilst they
are the same in point of chemical ingredients,
they differ as to chemical texture. So they
are the same things in different forms. All
these things turn very easily into sugar. You
can make sugar of linen rags, by boiling them
gently in oil of vitriol. Dame Nature makes
the sugar for us in malting. She always does
make sugar in grain for the young sprout
to start from. The change of starch into
sugar goes by the name of the 'saccharine
fermentation;' about which there's a curious
fact I have to mention presently.

"The rest of the carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen
in the malt is in the shape of gum or
mucilage, and colouring-matter. In the barley,
before it became malt, there was a small
quantity of a substance called diastase. This
contains the other chemical element of things
that live and grow; animals and plants:
nitrogen. There is very little diastase in
barley: not more than one part in five
hundred; but without it the change of starch
into sugar could not be set a going.

"Now, Chemistiy says, that there are such
and such things in malt; but it does not
follow that there may not be more. Those
niceties in the composition of things that
make flavours and perfumes, most of them,
are not to be laid hold of or shown up by the
art and instruments of philosophers, at least
at present, and all we know about them, is
by their effect on our palates and our noses:
as the Doctor says, 'on our gustatory and
olfactory nerves.' But, however, all this
does not signify for our present purpose; and
to understand the chemical part of brewing, we
need only to look upon malt as so much grain
turned into so much sugar.

"Seeing then that we know, in a general
way, what water, and malt, and hops, are
made of, and that we've got them to make
beer with: the question is, how to use them
for that important purpose. As I said before,
I am not going to describe the process of
brewing. Talking as I am to the wives and
daughters of England, which latter will of
course, become the former in good time, I
should as soon think of lecturing on the darning
of stockings or sewing of buttons on; to
say nothing of the crochet which is so favourite
a fancy just at present. No: I trust that the
practice of brewing, and let me add of baking,
and of cookery in all its branches, is as
familiar to all young ladies as geography,
astronomy, and the use of the globes, callisthenic
exercises, elocution, dancing, and deportment;
and if I pretended to teach them how
to brew, the next piece of conceit I should be
guilty of, would probably be, in the words of
my learned friend the Doctor, 'instructing my
parent's maternal parent in the art of applying
the power of suction, in order to extract
the contents of gallinaceous ova.' After which
trying quotation, ladies and gentlemen, you'll
perhaps allow me to take a sip of a beverage,
which by name comes under the head of this
discourse; however 'tis only the celebrated
Adam's Ale: and no bad thing neither, when
genuine, which is hard to get in these times,
except in your cottage near a wood, if you
happen to be so fortunately situated, in a
sanitary point of view."

Having refreshed himself with a glass of
water, the lecturer proceeded:—

"The first step in brewing consists in making
an infusion of malt. Never mind about the
physicky sound of this phrase. In other
words, we will say mashing, if you like. But
I use it because, in doctors' language, the
word infusion means a liquor made by steeping
a thing in hot water, to soak the goodness
out of it, as counter- distinguished from boiling
out the virtue; which last process is