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
4 - The Value of Beer
- 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 man who has practised brewing all his life, and who may generally make good beer, will not readily submit to the correction of one who tells him he has always worked at random, and who proposes to subject his future operations to the test of instruments he does not understand … But should the instruments he recommends be established by an experience of their utility, formidable as they now appear, familiarity will simplify the application of them to a new generation of brewers, who may then be tempted to exult over their predecessors.
[J. Noorthouck]The previous chapter introduced John Richardson as the first author to draw together the powerful rhetorical positions of the practical commercial brewer and the philosophically literate theorist. In 1784, Richardson extended this approach in a new direction by issuing a 250-page treatise, Statical Estimates of the Materials of Brewing. The title recalls Stephen Hales's Statical Essays of 1727–33 on pneumatic chemistry: one of Richardson's interests, as we will see below, was the contribution of gases to the character of drink. The book's real focus, however, was indicated by its subtitle: A Treatise on the Application and Use of the Saccharometer. This was a floating device for measuring wort and beer strength numerically: it provided, said Richardson, a universal indicator of the value of brewery products and practices.
Richardson's project invites comparison with Michael Combrune's grand claims for the thermometer a quarter of a century earlier (chapter 2).
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- Information
- Brewing Science, Technology and Print, 1700–1880 , pp. 83 - 106Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014