The Lowe Street Brewery.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1094, 1 July 1882, Page 2

The Lowe Street Brewery.

Mb. G. Johnstone’s brewery in Lowe-street is well worthy of a visit from anyone who is curious upon such matters. To us it afforded an instructive and interesting hour’s study. The machinery was not in work at the time of our visit and we had the chance of seeing everything without running the risk of being boiled. The brewery is the highest building in the town of Gisborne, and affords an unequalled view from its upper storey. On entering the cellar we found ourselves in a long building full of ale hogsheads standing on forms ready for supply. Ou penetrating further into the mysterious depths of the brewery we came to the engine-house, in which is set up a six-horsepower engine, driven by a vertical boiler from which is supplied steam for the coils by which the water, or as it is called in brewing parlance, “ liquor,” is heated, and the worts boiled. This engine pumps the water from a well some 30 feet m depth, and forces it upwards into tanks fixed in the upper storey, from whence it is conducted into the liquor vats where it is heated by the aforesaid steam coil. It is then mixed in the mash tub with the dry malt which has been previously crushed by a malt mill driven by the same engine. The mixture is then steeped in the mush tun, or as our grandmothers used to call it when applied to tea, “ masked.” After this comes the asperging process which is applied by means of a copper vessel with three hpllow perforated arms working on the head cf a spindle on the principle of a turbine wheel. The liquid, or “ worts ” as it is now called, is run into the wort tun on a lower storey, where it is again boiled by means of a steam coil, and the necessary quantity of hops applied. It is then run off over a refrigerator composed of a series of copper tubes through which cold water is constantly running, and over which the hot liquor is kept equally distributed by means of rows of serrated teeth on the undermost parts of the tnbes. When cooled by this process the liquor is run off into the fermenting tun on the'sforey immediately above the cellar where it is fermented by the addition of yeast previous to being run into the cleansing hogsheads in the cellar, where the yeast is worked off and the completed article fined and rectified for sale. Passing out of the cellar and round to the right wo enter the bottlingroom, which although only separated from the cellar by a bu.khead, does not (such are the p of a paternal legislature) communicate with it directly. Here by an ingenious arrangement on the syphon principle the material is filled into bottles, and handed over to the corker, who sits.on an iron seat attached to a powerful little Viachine from the manufactory of Meuro Gerais & Co., of Bordeaux, J

and corks t e bottles as fast as he can pick them up. By this powerful little machine, any cork, large as it may be, that can be thrown into it, can be forced into the neck of any bottle not smaller than a pint. We now pass on. to the cooperage where casks are made, ihended, steamed, and made ready to receive the generous liqnor from the cellar. Few people when drinking a glass of file, think of the labour and expense attendant upon its manufacture, and to such we say pay a * isit to the brewery, where the courtesy of the proprietor and the interesting process which he will describe to you will open your eyes as to the amount of labour and capital expended yearly in the producti <n of ale and porter.