Page:A Practical Treatise on Brewing (4th ed.).djvu/55

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ELECTRICITY.
39

his doubts of any certainty of success, until the tuns were differently situated. No change of position could, at that time, be made. The fermentations, however, although by no means right, went on indifferently well for several brewings. But in a brewing, which was made on the 2d of July, the fermentation the next day (the 3d) became quite stationary, with regard both to temperature and attenuation: and although all the usual means were resorted to, none had the desired effect of forwarding the process. Having previously seen the same cessation of fermentation in an electrically excited state of the atmosphere, he had no doubt but that the extraordinary results proceeded from electric action, and stated his opinion to that effect to the brewer and others, at the same time predicting that we should very soon have a thunder-storm. As it is generally considered hurtful to let beer remain in the gyle-tun in a state of total inactivity, it was immediately cleansed by pumping it from the gyle-tun, into casks placed upon wooden stillions about eighteen inches high, where it soon began to throw out its yeast very well, and at the same time underwent an attenuation of 6 lbs. per Long’s instrument. Early the same evening a thunder-storm came on, which was of unusual violence.

The fact of beer of the same brewing turning out so differently in one cellar from another, is too