Having witnessed the process of brewing, from the grinding of the malt to the racking of the beer, we now turn our attention to the extensive and complicated plant which furnishes this brewery with water, ice, steam and light. The first inquiry addressed to the brew-master concerning the water brings on a highly interesting lecture on the importance of this element in brewing, and the difficulty of obtaining it in the state best suited for our purpose. True, the water which gushes from the gneiss-rocks of Manhattan Island, as well as that which is conveyed to us from afar through the aqueduct, is very good and wholesome; but it will not bear a comparison with the water that the Munich brewer receives from the river Isar, nor that which, ever since the 13th century, has rendered famous the ales of Burton-on-Trent. The reputation of the Munich beer is quite as old as that of this English ale, and in both instances popular superstition attributed the excellent qualities of these beers to secret recipes, possessed only by the monks who operated the breweries. The real and only secret, however, was the exceptionally favorable quality of the water. Our water is not the worst by any means; quite the contrary, it is, as we have said, good and suitable enough for brewing; but not a single experienced brewer in our land would dare to deny that if we had Isar water, our beers would be better than those of Munich; in fact, even with this difference in the water operating against us, much American beer is pronounced by connoisseurs to be superior to the average Munich beer. In an establishment of the size of the brewery we are describing, water plays an important part, not only as a component of beer, but also as an essential agent of cleanliness, motive-power and temperature. For all these purposes the ordinary supply of water does not suffice. To cover the deficiency, this brewery has two sources from which copious supplies are drawn. The one is an artesian well, which yields, daily, 50,000 gallons of water; the other, a pumping station on the East River which, during the summer months, or whenever needed, supplies daily 900,000 gallons of salt water, used for the condensers of the refrigerating machine. The artesian well is seven hundred feet deep, drilled through solid rock, and constructed in the best manner; it is worked by a powerful duplex pump. The enormous quantities of water flowing into the brewery, and used for purposes other than brewing proper, supply eight steam boilers, furnishing steam for fourteen engines of twelve hundred horse-power; a refrigerating plant, consisting of three machines, of an aggregate ice-melting capacity of 330 tons; the different stables, and the wash-houses, where barrels, chips, wagons, etc., are cleaned.