Brewing Science, Technology and Print, 1700-1880 by Sumner James

Author:Sumner, James. [Sumner, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781848934238
Publisher: National Book Network International

Beer and Britannica

In 1813, work began on a major supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica under the editorship of the Edinburgh lawyer and man of letters, Macvey Napier (1776–1847). To distinguish the Britannica in an increasingly crowded market, Napier broke from the convention of textual recycling, seeking new-minted contributions from the most prestigious authorities in Scotland and England. No natural philosopher himself, Napier relied frequently on the guidance of his scientific authors, and gave them considerable freedom in the extent and scope of their coverage.52 Thomson was an obvious choice, having served as assistant editor to a previous Britannica supplement; now based in London, he had been elected to the Royal Society and was editing a journal of his own, the Annals of Philosophy. Though Napier appointed William Brande to write a general dissertation on chemistry, he gave Thomson most of the specialist chemical entries, particularly those addressing the useful arts. Thomson’s letters to Napier show him struggling against chronic ill health and the incessant workload of teaching, the editorship of the Annals and the revision of his System; yet he persistently took on as much Britannica work as he could conceivably manage. The attraction was not only the payment – which was generous – but the opportunity of shaping how his field was presented in what had become the pre-eminent reference work of the age.

Since the supplement was to be issued in instalments, Napier had to commission entries in approximately alphabetical order. Around the beginning of 1816, Thomson staked his claim to a clutch of industrial processes under the letter B. For ‘Baking’, he compiled an article of around 10,000 words; for ‘Brick-making’, half as much and for ‘Bleaching’ somewhat more. His entry on ‘Brewing’, however, was longer than all three put together, comprising over 20,000 words of text and, unusually, many pages of quantitative data on barley, malt, worts and finished beer. The reason for such special treatment, Thomson explained to Napier, was that ‘no account of this manufactory of the least value’ had yet been printed.53

The brewing entries in early editions of the Britannica had been hacked together from standard sources such as Combrune and Richardson. Signalling a clean break, Thomson opened with a ‘history’ of brewing whose real purpose was to reject every word of the prior literature written by practising brewers. Combrune, for one, had offered a far from ‘rational’ account: his thermometric diagnostics were fatally flawed, said Thomson, because malt colour depended far more on the rate of heating than on the degree of heat attained. At least Combrune had given his theory freely to the public, however, unlike the ‘reprehensible’ Richardson:

If a brewer conceives he knows more of his art than his neighbours, and chooses to keep his knowledge to himself, there is nothing to be said; but if he publish a book upon the subject, and yet persists in his concealment, he deserves no quarter. His book, in such a case, can be looked upon in no other light than as a quack bill to advertise the goodness of his wares.

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