degrees of heat, and each part predominating in proportion to the time and manner of its application. In the curing of malt, as nothing more is requisite than a total extrication of every watery particle, if we had in the season proper for malting a sun heat sufficient to produce perfect dryness, it were practicable to produce beer nearly colourless; but that being wanting, and the force of custom having made it necessary to give our beers various tinctures and qualities resulting from fire, for the accommodation of various tastes, we are necessitated to apply such heats in the drying as shall not only answer the purpose of preservation, but give the complexion and property required; to effect this with certainty, and precision, the introduction of the thermometer is necessary, but the real advantages of its application are only to be known from experiment, on account of the different construction of different kilns, the irregularity of the heat in different parts of the same kiln, the depth of the malt, the distance of the bulb of the thermometer from the floor; for though similar heats will produce similar effects in the same situation, yet the distribution of heat in every kiln is so irregular, that the medium spot for the local situation of the thermometer as a standard, cannot be easily fixed for ascertaining effects upon the whole. That done, the several degrees, necessary for the purposes of porter, amber, pale beers, &c. are easily discovered to the utmost exactness, and become the certain rule of future practice.

Though custom has laid this arbitrary injunction of variety on our malt liquors, it may not be amiss to intimate the losses we often sustain, and the inconvenience we combat in our obedience to her mandates.

The further we pursue the deeper tints of colour by an increase of heat, beyond that which simple preservation requires the more we injure the valuable qualities of the malt. It is well known that scorched oils turn black, and that calcined sugar assumes the same complexion; similar effects are producible in malts, in proportion to the increase of heat, or the time of their continuing exposed to it. The parts of the whole being so intimately united by nature, an injury cannot be done to the one without affecting the other; accordingly we find that such parts of the subject as might have been severally extracted for the purpose of a more intimate union by fermentation, are, by great heat in curing, burned and blended so effectually together, that all discrimination is lost—the unfermentable are extracted with the fermentable, the integrant with the constituent, to the very great loss of spirituosity and transparency. In paler malts the extracting liquor produces a separation, which cannot be effected in brown, where the parts are so incorporated, that unless the brewer is very acquainted with their several qualities and attachments, he will bring over with the burned mixture of saccharine and mucilaginous principles, such an abundance of the scorched oils, as no fermentation can attenuate, no precipitants remove; for being themselves impediments to the action of fermentation, they lessen its efficacy; and being of the same specific gravity with the beer, they remain suspended in, and incorporated with, the body of it—an offence to the eye, and nausea to the palate, to the latest period. From this account it is evident the drying of malt is an article of the utmost consequence concerning the proper degree of heat to be employed for this purpose. Mr. Combrune has related some experiments made in an earthen pan, of about two feet diameter, and three inches deep, in which was put as much of the palest malts, very unequally grown, as filled it to the brim. This being placed over a charcoal fire, in a small stove, and kept continually stirred from bottom to top, exhibited different changes according to the degrees of heat employed on the whole. He concludes, that true germinated malts are charred in heats between one hundred and seventy-five, and one hundred and eighty degrees, and that as these correspond to the degrees in which pure alcohol, or the finest spirit of the grain itself boils, or disengages itself therefrom, they may point out to us the reason of barley being the fittest grain for the purpose of brewing.

From these experiments, Mr. Combrune has constructed a table of the different degrees of the dryness of malt, with the colour occasioned by the difference of heat. Thus, malt exposed to one hundred and nineteen degrees, is white; to one hundred and twenty-four, cream colour; one hundred and twenty-nine, light yellow; one hundred and thirty-four, amber colour; one hundred and thirty-eight, brown; one hundred and fifty-two, high brown; one hundred and fifty-seven, brown, inclining to black; one hundred and sixty-two, high brown speckled with black; one hundred and seventy-one, colour of burned coffee; one hundred and seventy-six, black. This account not only shows us how to judge of the dryness of malt by its colour; but also, when grist is composed of several kinds of malt, what effect the whole will have when blended together by extraction. Experience proves that the less heat we employ in drying malt, the shorter time will be required before the beer that is brewed from it is fit to drink, and this will be according to the following table:

The plain practical process of Malting pale Malt, according to the most approved English method.

Suppose you are about to malt spring or summer barley, and that your steep contains sixty bushels. The time generally allowed for this kind of grain to remain in steep is from forty to forty-eight hours, taking care to give two waters; the first water is to continue on the grain twenty-four hours, then run off, and fresh water put on. This precaution is essentially necessary, in order to make clean bright malt, and should never be omitted. It is further right, at each watering, to skim off the surface of the water the light grain, chaff, and seed weeds, that are found floating on it; all this kind of trash, when suffered to remain in the steep, is a real injury to the malt, and considerably depreciates its value when offered for sale, and not less so when brewed. The depth of water over the barley in the steep need not exceed two or three inches, but should not be less. When the barley has remained in steep the necessary time, the water is let off by a plug hole at the bottom of the steep, with a strainer on the inside of the hole; when the barley is thus sufficiently strained, it should be let down by a plug hole in the bottom of the steep into the couch frame on the lower floor, (or adjoining to it, which would be the better construction,) which is no more than a square or oblong inclosure of inch and a half boards ledged together, and about two feet deep, of sufficient capacity to hold the contents of the steep, and so placed, in upright grooves, as to ship and unship in this frame. The steeped barley is to remain for twenty-four hours in the frame, when it should be broke out, and carefully turned from the bottom to the top, nearly of the same thickness it was in the frame, not less than sixteen or eighteen inches, where it should be suffered to remain twenty-four hours longer, or until the germination begins to appear: but this will be always shorter or longer, according to the temperature of