Though transparency in beers is a sure sign of the salts and oils being in an exact proportion, it is in no wise a proof of the justness of taste: for strong salts acting on strong oils may produce pellucidity, but the delicacy and pungency of taste, depend on the finer oils and the choicest salts being wholly preserved, these best admitting of fermentation, and most perfectly becoming miscible with the liquor, the more volatile oils and salts of the grain if excluded, by the malt being too high dried, the consequence in the beer must be, an heavy and rancid taste. The less dried the malts are, which are brewed for beers to be long kept, the hotter are the extracts required to be, but this greater heat being communicated to the grain through water, an element eight hundred times more dense than air, the finer parts of the corn, though acted upon by an heat which in air would disperse them, by this means are retained. It appears, by the table (page 124) that drinks brewed from malts, affected by heats, whose medium is 148 degrees, and with twelve pounds of hops to every quarter of malt, require from 6 to 12 months with precipitation to become bright; this is the age generally appointed for brown beers to be drank at, and by the table, page 133, we find the proper malts where the medium heat of the whole process is 148 degrees, must be such as have been dried with 130 degrees to form this liquor, whose color as yet is expected to be full or brown, without being deprived of more valuable qualifications. In the drink before examined, the number of degrees which constitute the properties of malt, affected by a mean heat of 138 or 7 degrees, were employed, they being intended to become, in time, spontaneously bright; but, as this quality in the present case is required only with the assistance of precipitation, the number 5, in the table, shewing the constituent parts remaining in the grain at every degree of dryness, (page 168) as this corresponds to the medium 148, is undoubtedly that which must answer our purpose, both as to the nature and to the time this liquor is in general made use of. These conditions being premised, the proper degrees of the first and last extract for porter will be found by the same rules as were used before. 130 Degrees, malt’s dryness. ------- 148 Degrees, whole medium intended. ------- 4 Degrees, value of hops, fractions omitted. ------- 144 Mean of malt’s dryness and heat of extracts. ------- For the first extract. 144 As before. 2-1/2 Half the number of the constituent degrees to be deducted. ------- 141-1/2 Mean of malt’s dryness, and of the heat of the first extract. ------- 130 Malt’s Dryness. 153 Rule to discover the first heat. ------- 283 ------- 141-1/2 As above. For the last extract.