t and West Indies, South America, &c. In more
temperate climes, the simple precaution of filtering alone will be
found to answer every necessary purpose, without steeping the corks in
spirits. But suppose you bottle for home consumption, in that case you
will naturally wish to have your beer, ale, and porter, get up in the
bottle in as short a space of time as possible, in that case you should
pack away your bottles in dry straw in summer, in sawdust in winter, as
your object at that season will naturally be rather to accelerate than
retard fermentation; here you should carefully watch its progress from
day to day, by drawing a bottle from the centre of the heap, as nearly
as you can get at it; place this bottle between you and the light, and
if you perceive a chain of small bubbles in the neck of the bottle,
immediately under the cork, you may conclude your beer is up in the
bottle, then draw a few more bottles, and if the same appearance
continues in them also, it is time to draw all your bottles from the
heap they were originally packed in, and set them on their bottoms in a
square frame ten inches deep, size optional; fill up this frame with
the bottles of porter, or ale, so drawn in a ripe state, then get one
or more bushels of bay salt, and scatter it as evenly as you can over
the bottles, until the space between their necks is nearly half filled;
then another course of bottles may be sunk between these, with their
necks down through the salt, so as to form an upper tier; thus treated,
not a single bottle will be found to break from the force of
fermentation, and the salt will answer for a fresh supply of bottles,
as often as you may find it necessary to draw, or send them out, this
quantity will answer your purpose for years, if you only keep it dry;
another advantage, and no small one, derivable from a bottling
operation conducted in this way, will be, that a loft will be found
more convenient for the purpose than a ground floor, as less damp, and
more likely to preserve the salt dry, which a more moist atmosphere
would naturally dissolve. The practice here recommended may, with equal
success, be applied to cider and perry.

_Brewing Coppers, the best method of setting them._

This article, at a first view, may not appear to have much connexion
with brewing, but, when attentively considered, it has a very material
one, as also with economy, by saving nearly one half the fuel. It is a
well-known fact in