Simple as all these operations may appear from our description, they are, nevertheless, effected by most complicated and costly machinery, in the construction of which human ingenuity was put to a severe test. The principal object of these machines is not, as might be supposed, the saving of labor, but rather the elimination of chance and accident from this preliminary work of the brewer. These most modern improvements preclude almost entirely the many chances of failure to which a less perfect method of sifting malt will always expose the operation of brewing. The presence of any metallic substance or of an excess of germ or dust, will inevitably spoil the wort. The methods spoken of here not only preclude this, but also tend to insure uniformity of quality, and offer, besides, a certain degree of immunity from the danger of explosion, which is ever present in any establishment where the elimination and collection of the malt-dust is effected in a less perfect way. As we have seen, the floors of the west wing of the main building serve the purposes of weighing, sifting and storing malt. On the upper floors of the other parts of this building we find, in separate rooms, the smaller bins before described; tuns for preliminary mashing; the cooling tank, and a number of colossal vats containing water of varying degrees of temperature, heated by exhaust steam. [Sidenote: MASHING AND SPARGING] Having crushed his malt, the brewer now proceeds to mashing, a most important part of his art. The crushed malt is conveyed from the smaller bins to a “Vormaischbütte,” that is to say, a mash-tun in which the malt is thoroughly mixed with water, preparatory to its transfer to the regular mash-tuns. Neither manual labor nor physical efforts of any kind are required in thus conveying the malt to the mash-tuns; everything moves by steam-power. The object of mashing, _i.e._, the process of infusion or mixing the malt with water at a proper temperature, is two-fold, viz. 1, to extract from the malt the saccharine substance and dextrine which are contained therein; and secondly, to convert into maltose and dextrine the residue of unconverted starch. The three immense iron tubs, in which the malt is mashed, are set in wooden frames, rising about four to five feet above the flooring. Here, too, the magnificent plant of steam engines, of which we shall speak later on, is brought into application; it sets in motion the mashing apparatus within the tun, which is composed of a number of raking contrivances fastened upon two huge arms, revolving in opposite directions around central pivots, in such manner as to mix every particle of the grain, as it drops from the “Vormaischbütte” on the floor above.