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2 - The Theorist and the Thermometer

James Sumner
James Sumner
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Summary

COMBRUNE (Mr. Michael), the first who has, with any degree of accuracy, applied the thermometer to use in brewing, V, 3. His table of the medium heat of the air in and about London, in each season of the year, ibid. Great pity that he did not endeavour to render his book intitled ‘The Theory and Practice of Brewing’ more intelligible than it is, 111.

J. Mills, from the index to A New System of Practical Husbandry

Michael Combrune's Essay on Brewing of 1758 looks like a convenient milestone. It is the first brewery publication structured as a chemical treatise, and the first to discuss thermometry. It is also the first whose author was an active commercial brewer: indeed, it is dedicated to ‘the Master, Wardens, and Members of the Worshipful Company of Brewers in London’, to which Combrune belonged. It is tempting, therefore, to see the Essay as signifying a shift in brewers' attitudes away from the closed conventions of craft mystery, towards the systematic public development of useful knowledge. This temptation is one we should resist. The Company's dominance was waning by the 1750s, with corporate leadership of the trade passing to well-capitalized gentlemen-proprietors from diverse backgrounds; and, although Combrune had his imitators, few brewers published anything before 1800.

Nonetheless, Combrune's publication is an important marker of two significant changes in philosophical culture: a revised trades improvement agenda and the increasing availability of systematic chemical texts.

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Brewing Science, Technology and Print, 1700–1880 , pp. 33 - 58
Publisher: Pickering & Chatto
First published in: 2014

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