Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Principal Dramatis Personae
- Introduction
- 1 The Curious Brewer
- 2 The Theorist and the Thermometer
- 3 Brewery Instructors in Public and Private
- 4 The Value of Beer
- 5 Chemists, Druggists and Beer Doctors
- 6 Professors in the Brewhouse
- 7 Treatises for the Trade
- 8 Analysis and Synthesis
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
7 - Treatises for the Trade
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Principal Dramatis Personae
- Introduction
- 1 The Curious Brewer
- 2 The Theorist and the Thermometer
- 3 Brewery Instructors in Public and Private
- 4 The Value of Beer
- 5 Chemists, Druggists and Beer Doctors
- 6 Professors in the Brewhouse
- 7 Treatises for the Trade
- 8 Analysis and Synthesis
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
[A] brewer, on going from one brewhouse to another, oft en finds it impossible to produce beer which is equally good in his new situation … How is this to be accounted for? In days of yore it was attributed to witchcraft … Chemistry has, however, superseded witchcraft, in every process dependent upon its own laws. The process of brewing being strictly chemical from beginning to end, must be subservient to the laws of chemistry, and until these laws are understood and applied, no uniformity can be expected.
W. BlackThis chapter traces the changing character of published literature on brewing between the 1820s and 1850s. The backdrop to this change was the slowly emerging acceptance, in a variety of manufacturing industries, that chemically trained managers could make a decisive commercial difference. The largest breweries first began to appoint chemists of their own from the 1830s, although it was not for another three decades that a group of ‘brewing chemists’ emerged large enough to function as a community, a development I will discuss in chapter 8. Across the period covered by the present chapter, only a handful of texts was published by men brewing on their own account.
In the eighteenth century, it had been possible for a brewer such as Michael Combrune to theorize about the trade, before a public audience, with no other goal than establishing himself as a credible philosopher.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Brewing Science, Technology and Print, 1700–1880 , pp. 157 - 180Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014