Page:A Practical Treatise on Brewing (4th ed.).djvu/49

public-houses in their neighbourhood, and these houses being limited in number, the labouring classes are prevented from selecting their own beverage, and have no choice but to drink that of the proprietors of the public-houses, who are also the brewers. Most of such beers are very imperfectly manufactured, and are usually foul and yeast-bitten, and have a very disagreeble, rank bitter, derived from the yeast left in the beer, instead of its being thrown out by a proper process. This bitter, although often mistaken for it, is very different from the agreeable and aromatic flavour of the hop. Yeast-bitten beer is particularly injurious to wet-nurses in the suckling of infants. In some districts, unsound, stale beer is the favourite beverage; so that, from long use, good, sound beer would not be appreciated, but rejected. A frequent cause of such inferior beers proceeds from want of proper attention being paid to cleanliness, which produces tainted worts, and consequently bad fermentations. I suspect, however, that it very often proceeds from electric or galvanic agency: the fermenting vessels, being very frequently sunk in the ground, are particularly liable to be affected by all electrical and atmospherical changes, as I have had many opportunities of observing. It is to the latter that I wish to direct the attention of the meeting. It has long been familiarly known, that thunder sours beer; but, though generally known, very few brewers