A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes

benches or stools. Early in the dawn of morning, light the fire under your copper, filled with water over-night, and, as soon as it boils, with it fill the mash-tub rather more than three-parts full; and as soon as the first heat of the water has subsided, and you find that you are able to bear your fingers drawn slowly through it without experiencing pain, you must then throw in the malt, stirring it about for ten minutes or so; then lay some sticks across the mash-tub, and cover it with sacks or blankets, and allow it to steep for three hours. At the end of the three hours, let off the wort from the mash-tub into the underback-tub, which has been previously placed under the spigot and faucet ready to receive it; pouring the first that runs out back into the mash, until the wort runs free from grains, etc.; now put the hops into the underback-tub and let the wort run out upon them. Your copper having been refilled, and boiled again while the mash is in progress, you must now pour sufficient boiling water into the grains left in the mash-tub to make up your quantity of fifty-four gallons; and when this second mashing shall have also stood some two hours, let it be drawn off, and afterwards mixed with the first batch of wort, and boil the whole at two separate boilings, with the hops equally divided; each lot to be allowed to boil for an hour and a-half after it has commenced boiling. The beer is now to be strained through the loose wicker basket into your cooling tubs and pans; the more you have of these the better the beer, from its cooling quickly. And when the beer has cooled to the degree of water which has stood in the house in summer-time for some hours, let it all be poured into your two or three largest tubs, keeping back a couple or three quarts in a pan, with which to mix a pint of good yeast and a table-spoonful of common salt; stir