Beer quality safety and nutritional aspects 1st

Edition Paul S Hughes pdf download

https://ebookname.com/product/beer-quality-safety-and-
nutritional-aspects-1st-edition-paul-s-hughes/

Get Instant Ebook Downloads – Browse at https://ebookname.com

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Beer quality safety and nutritional aspects 1st Edition

E.D. Baxter

https://ebookname.com/product/beer-quality-safety-and-
nutritional-aspects-1st-edition-e-d-baxter/

Seafood Processing Technology Quality and Safety 1st

Edition Ioannis S. Boziaris

https://ebookname.com/product/seafood-processing-technology-
quality-and-safety-1st-edition-ioannis-s-boziaris/

Nutritional Aspects of Osteoporosis 2nd Edition Peter

Burckhardt

https://ebookname.com/product/nutritional-aspects-of-
osteoporosis-2nd-edition-peter-burckhardt/

Dogs in the North Stories of Cooperation and Co

Domestication 1st Edition Robert J. Losey

https://ebookname.com/product/dogs-in-the-north-stories-of-
cooperation-and-co-domestication-1st-edition-robert-j-losey/
Peter Gabriel From Genesis to Growing Up Ashgate
Popular and Folk Music Series 1st Edition Hill

https://ebookname.com/product/peter-gabriel-from-genesis-to-
growing-up-ashgate-popular-and-folk-music-series-1st-edition-
hill/

Encyclopedia of Soil Science Second Edition Two Volume

Set Rattan Lal

https://ebookname.com/product/encyclopedia-of-soil-science-
second-edition-two-volume-set-rattan-lal/

Sobral Pinto The Conscience of Brazil Leading the

Attack against Vargas 1930 1945 1st Edition John W. F.
Dulles

https://ebookname.com/product/sobral-pinto-the-conscience-of-
brazil-leading-the-attack-against-vargas-1930-1945-1st-edition-
john-w-f-dulles/

Feminists and Science Critiques and Changing

Perspectives in India 1st Edition Sumi Krishna (Editor)

https://ebookname.com/product/feminists-and-science-critiques-
and-changing-perspectives-in-india-1st-edition-sumi-krishna-
editor/

Microstructural Characterization of Materials 2nd

Edition David Brandon

https://ebookname.com/product/microstructural-characterization-
of-materials-2nd-edition-david-brandon/
Architectural graphic standards 10th Edition John Ray
Hoke

https://ebookname.com/product/architectural-graphic-
standards-10th-edition-john-ray-hoke/
BEER: QUALITY, SAFETY AND
NUTRITIONAL ASPECTS
 RSC Paperbacks
RSC Paperbacks are a series of inexpensive texts suitable for teachers and students and
give a clear, readable introduction to selected topics in chemistry. They should also
appeal to the general chemist. For further information on all available titles contact:

Sales and Customer Care Department, Royal Society of Chemistry,

Thomas Graham House, Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 0WF, UK
Telephone: ;44 (0)1223 432360; Fax: ;44 (0)1223 423429; E-mail: [email protected]

Recent Titles Available

The Chemistry of Fragrances

compiled by David Pybus and Charles Sell
Polymers and the Environment
by Gerald Scott
Brewing
by Ian S. Hornsey
The Chemistry of Fireworks
by Michael S. Russell
Water (Second Edition): A Matrix of Life
by Felix Franks
The Science of Chocolate
by Stephen T. Beckett
The Science of Sugar Confectionery
by W. P. Edwards
Colour Chemistry
by R. M. Christie
Beer: Quality, Safety and Nutritional Aspects
by E. Denise Baxter and Paul S. Hughes

Future titles may be obtained immediately on publication by placing a standing order

for RSC Paperbacks. Information on this is available from the address above.
 RSC Paperbacks

BEER: QUALITY, SAFETY AND

NUTRITIONAL ASPECTS

E. DENISE BAXTER
Brewing Research International,
Lyttel Hall, Nutfield, Redhill, Surrey RH1 4HY, UK

PAUL S. HUGHES
Heineken Technical Services,
Burgemeester Smeetsweg 1, 2382 PH Zoeterwoude,
The Netherlands
ISBN 0-85404-588-0

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2001

All rights reserved.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study, or
criticism or review as permitted under the terms of the UK Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, this publication may not be reproduced, stored or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of The Royal
Society of Chemistry, or in the case of reprographic reproduction only in
accordance with the terms of the licenses issued by the Copyright Licensing
Agency in the UK, or in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the
appropriate Reproduction Rights Organization outside the UK. Enquiries concerning
reproduction outside the terms stated here should be sent to The Royal
Society of Chemistry at the address printed on this page.

Published by The Royal Society of Chemistry,

Thomas Graham House, Science Park, Milton Road,
Cambridge CB4 0WF, UK
Registered Charity Number 207890

For further information see our web site at www.rsc.org

Typeset in Great Britain by Vision Typesetting, Manchester

Printed by Bookcraft Ltd, UK
 Preface

Beer has been a popular beverage for thousands of years and brewing is
often described as the oldest biotechnological process. Over the years the
brewmaster’s art has been supplemented by vast increases in our knowl-
edge of the chemistry and biochemistry both of the ingredients and of the
changes taking place to those ingredients during brewing. Together these
contribute to give the products we recognise today — a wide range of
different but consistently high quality beer types.
This book aims to explain the scientific principles which underpin
those aspects of beer which are of the great interest to the beer drinker —
namely its taste, appearance and nutritional qualities. This book is very
much a synthesis of the current thinking as many aspects of beer quality
are still tantalisingly elusive, so the story cannot be completed at the
moment. . . .

v
MMMM
 Contents

Glossary xi

Chapter 1
An Overview of the Malting and Brewing Processes 1
Malting 1
Mashing 4
Wort Boiling 8
Wort Clarification 9
Fermentation 9
Maturation 11
Packaging 12
Summary 13
Further Reading 13

Chapter 2
Beer Quality and the Importance of Visual Cues 14
Introduction 14
Physical Properties of Beer Foam 14
What is Beer Foam? 14
Nucleation 15
Foam Ageing 17
Beer Foam Components 18
Proteins/Polypeptides 18
Polysaccharides 19
Hop Bitter Acids 19
Metal Cations 20
Alcohols and Lipids 21
Gas Composition 21
pH 22
Other Components 22
Foam Parameters 23

vii
viii Contents

Foamability 23
Foam Stability 23
Foam Drainage 24
Cling 24
Viscoelasticity 24
Lateral Diffusion 25
Film Thickness 25
Bubble Size 25
Foam Structure 25
Improving Foam Stability 27
Propylene Glycol Alginate (PGA) 27
Chemically-modified Iso-
-acids 28
Choice of Raw Materials 28
Dispense Hardware and Gases 29
Foam Assessment 29
The Effects of Process on Final Foam Stability 30
Beer Colour 31
Perception of Colour 31
Light-absorbing Species in Beer 32
Beer Colour Measurement 33
Beer Clarity 36
Summary 37
References 38

Chapter 3
Flavour Determinants of Beer Quality 40
Introduction 40
The Taste of Beer 41
Sweetness 41
Sourness 42
Saltiness 43
Bitterness 43
Beer Aroma 48
Esters 48
Alcohols 48
Vicinal Diketones 51
Sulfur Compounds 52
Hop Aroma 58
Malt Flavours 64
Other Contributors to Beer Flavour 66
Drinkability 66
Contents ix

The Mouthfeel of Beer 68

Sensory Assessment of Beer 68
Understanding Sensory Data 70
Beer Flavour 71
Summary 72
References 73

Chapter 4
Maintenance of Beer Quality 74
Introduction 74
Beer Flavour Stability 74
Potential Sources of Flavour Instability 75
Distortion of Beer Flavour 86
Solving Flavour Instability of Beer 88
Foam Stability 88
The Formation of Haze 90
Polyphenol—Polypeptide Hazes 90
Calcium Oxalate 92
Carbohydrates 93
Other Sources of Haze in Beer 93
Microbiological Contamination and Beer Quality 93
Brewery Spoilage Organisms 94
Summary 96
References 96

Chapter 5
Nutritional Aspects of Beer 98
Beer Components of Nutritional Value 98
Water 99
Alcohol 100
Carbohydrates 102
Proteins, Peptides and Amino Acids 103
Lipids 104
Fibre 104
Energy Value 104
Minerals 105
Vitamins and Micronutrients 107
Phenolic Compounds 109
Hop Bitter Acids 112
Metabolism of Alcohol 113
Risks and Benefits of Drinking Alcohol 115
x Contents

Potential for Future Development 117

Summary 118
References 118

Chapter 6
Assuring the Safety of Beer 120
Risks to Food Safety 120
HACCP 121
Raw Materials 125
Processing 131
Microbiological Safety 131
Packaging 132
Deliberate Tampering 133
Allergens 133
Summary 134
Further Reading 135

Subject Index 136

 Glossary

-Acids: The major constituent of the resin (humulones) in hop cones:

-acids are converted to bittering substances (iso-
-acids) during wort
boiling.
Adjunct: Any source of fermentable extract other than malted barley used
in the mash tun or the copper. May be solid, e.g. cereal grits, or liquid e.g.
sugar syrup.
Air rest: An interruption of the steeping process to allow the barley to
absorb oxygen from the air and thus to overcome water sensitivity and to
ensure even germination.
Ale: Originally an unhopped but fermented malt drink, the term ale
nowadays refers to any beer produced at temperatures of between 16 and
21 °C (most frequently around 18 °C) using a top-fermenting yeast
(Saccharomyces cerevisiae).
Aleurone: The thick layer of living cells which surrounds the starchy
endosperm in mature barley kernels.
Amylopectin: The second major constituent of barley starch, amylopectin
is a large, highly branched molecule consisting of glucose units linked by

-1,4 and
-1,6 bonds.
Amylose: One of the two main components of barley starch. Amylose
consists of a linear chain of glucose molecules linked by
-1,4 bonds.
Attentuation: The reduction in density of wort which occurs during
fermentation as sugars are converted to alcohol.
Beer: In the UK, the legal definition of beer is for Excise purposes, and
defines beer as any liquor made or sold as beer. The clearest technical
definition describes beer as a fermented liquor produced mainly from
malted barley but including other carbohydrate sources and flavoured
with hops.
Cask: A large container for draught beer, originally made of wood, but
now may also be made of aluminium. Traditionally, beer casks came in
seven sizes: butt (108 gallons), puncheon (72 gallons), hogshead (54 gal-
lons), barrel (36 gallons), kilderkin (18 gallons), firkin (9 gallons) and pin
(4.5 gallons). NB 1 gallon : 4.54 litres.

xi
xii Glossary

Cold break: The precipitate formed when wort is cooled to room tempera-
tures, consisting mainly of protein.
Copper: The vessel in which wort is boiled with hops to obtain the
characteristic bitter flavours. So-called because it traditionally was made
of copper, now often made of stainless steel. Also known as the kettle.
Crystal malt: Malt whose endosperm has been converted to a sugary
crystalline mass during kilning. A proportion of crystal malt is added to
the grist to provide colour and flavour to certain beers, particularly
British ales.
Cylindroconical vessel: A cylindrical vertical tank with a conical base in
which the yeast sediments after fermentation. Temperature is controlled
by cooling-coils around the walls. Capacity ranges from 200 to 6000
hectolitres.
Embryo: The part of the barley kernel which gives rise to the new plant.
Endosperm: The part of the barley kernel other than the embryo. The
endosperm consists essentially of a store of food for the new barley plant.
Finings: Charged colloidal substances, prepared from isinglass (collagen)
from the swim bladders of certain tropical fish.
Flocculation: The clumping together of yeast cells at the end of fermenta-
tion. Also used to describe the clumping together of protein precipitated
during wort boiling.
Germination: The sprouting of the resting barley seed to form new roots
and shoots. The first visible sign is the cream-coloured ‘chit’ or first root
emerging from the embryo end of the barley kernel.
Gibberellins: Natural plant hormones (phytohormones) produced by the
barley embryo in response to steeping in water. Gibberellins stimulate the
production of enzymes in the endosperm which hydrolyse the stored food
reserves in the embryo and make them available to the growing plant.
Green beer: Freshly produced beer immediately after the end of primary
fermentation and before conditioning (maturation).
Green malt: Barley germinated for between one and five days, before
kilning, with a moisture content of at least 40%.
Grist: The term given to the mixture of coarsely ground malted barley,
together with milled raw cereals and speciality malts (and barley) such as
crystal malt or roast barley. Includes liquid adjuncts such as syrups. May
also be applied to the mixture of hops and hop pellets added to the copper.
Hops: A perennial climbing vine, Humulus lupulus, a member of the family
of Cannabinaceae. First recorded use to flavour beer was in Egypt, 600
years BC. The part traditionally used in brewing is the hop cone, which is
the female ripened flower. In modern brewing, the hop cones are either
extracted or finely powdered and compressed to form hop pellets which
keep better and are easier to transport.
Glossary xiii

Hordein: The main component of barley protein. Closely related to

similar proteins in wheat (gliadins), rye (secalins) and maize (zeins).
Hot break: Term given to the precipitate of protein which forms in boiled
wort when it is cooled. Also called trub.
Husk: The outer, protective layers of the barley kernel, formed from the
fruit and seed coats.
Isinglass: Collagen from the swim bladders of certain tropical fish, used as
finings (qv) in beer to assist clarification.
Kettle: Another term, originally American, for the vessel in which wort is
boiled. See also ‘copper’.
Kilning: The final stage of malting in which the green malt is dried and
cured by heating in a draught of warm air. The final temperature depends
upon the type of malt being made.
Lager: A pale straw coloured beer produced from a lightly kilned malt
and fermented by bottom-fermenting yeast (Saccharomyces carlsbergen-
sis) at a low temperature (7—13 °C) and matured for several weeks.
Lautering: The process by which the sweet wort is separated from the
spent grains, by drawing it off through the bed of spent grains.
Lauter tun: Vessel in which wort is separated from the spent grains by
filtration through the spent grain bed. Generally a wide shallow vessel
fitted with rakes to break up the bed.
Mashing: Process in which milled malt is mixed with hot water to extract
cereal components, mainly starch. This starch is then converted to fer-
mentable sugars by enzyme action.
Mash tun: The vessel in which mashing occurs. May also be called the
‘conversion’ vessel. In traditional ale brewing, the wort is also separated
from the spent grains in the mash tun. However, in modern practice, it is
more common to transfer the mash to a specific filtration vessel, the
lauter tun (qv).
Original gravity (OG): This is the gravity of the wort prior to fermenta-
tion. In general, the higher the gravity, the more alcohol is produced, but
there is no absolute correlation since worts may contain varying propor-
tions of unfermentable material (such as protein). In addition, some types
of beers retain some sugars that are potentially fermentable. The OG has
often been the basis for calculating the excise duty payable, but nowadays
the final alcohol content is more generally used.
Paraflow: A plate heat exchanger for cooling wort after boiling. Also used
to cool beer before packaging.
Primings: Sugar added after the primary fermenatation, particularly to
traditional mild ales and sweet stouts, to add some sweetness. May also
be added to cask ales to provide additional fermentable extract for
secondary fermentation in the cask.
xiv Glossary

Racking: The process of filling beer into casks, kegs or storage tanks after
fermentation.
Small beer: A light, digestible table beer, relatively low in alcohol
(OG  1025°) produced from the Middle Ages by re-extracting grist
already partially extracted to produce a strong ale.
Sorghum: A small-grained cereal grown in Africa and southern USA
which can be used for brewing beer.
Spent grains: The residue of milled malt left after mashing. Spent grains
consist mainly of husk and bran layers. They are relatively rich in protein
and are used as cattle feed.
Steeping: The first stage of the malting process. Involves soaking the
barley grain in water until the moisture is raised from 12% to 45%.
Generally involves two or more immersion stages separated by air rests
(qv).
Stillage: A wooden or metal structure which supports beer casks in a
horizontal position in the cellar prior to dispense, allowing the yeast and
protein to sediment with the finings and clarify the beer.
Trub: The coagulated protein which separates out in the wort after
boiling. Also known as the ‘hot break’, the word trub is derived from a
German word meaning ‘break’.
Tun: A term used to describe any large vessel in a brewery, e.g. mash tun,
lauter tun etc.
Whirlpool: A type of centrifuge used to separate the hot break or trub
from the wort on cooling.
Wort: The sweet syrupy liquid which results from extraction and hydroly-
sis of starch from malted barley during mashing. After the addition of
hops during boiling, sweet wort becomes bitter wort.
Yeast: A single-celled microorganism which, in the absence of oxygen,
can use glucose as a respiratory substrate and convert it to ethanol. The
two main strains used in brewing are Saccharomyces carlsbergensis (bot-
tom fermenting lager yeast) and top fermenting ale yeast Saccharomyces
cerevisiae. Individual brewing companies each have their own sub-strain,
selected over countless generations for particular properties regarded as
desirable to the brewer.
 Chapter 1

An Overview of the Malting and

Brewing Processes

MALTING
The story of beer starts with ripe barley grain, plump and sound, with a
moderate (for a cereal) protein content of 10—12%. The barley kernel is
roughly ovoid in shape, surrounded by protective layers of husk, with a
small embryo at one end. This embryo is the part that will grow into the
new plant, given the chance. The remaining part of the kernel is the
endosperm, which is basically just a store of food for the young plant.
Most of the endosperm consists of large dead cells with thick cell walls
consisting mainly of
-glucan (a polymer of glucose molecules linked by

-glycosidic bonds) together with some pentosan (an arabinoxylan poly-
mer) and a little protein.
These cells are stuffed with starch granules, which come in two sizes;
large (about 15—20 m diameter) and small (about 2 m diameter). There
are very many more small granules than large granules but they account
for less than 5% of the weight of the starch. These starch granules are
embedded in a matrix of hordein. This is an insoluble protein which
provides a store of peptides and amino acids for the new plant. The whole
of the starchy endosperm is surrounded by the aleurone, which is a triple
layer of living cells.
The whole aim of the malting process is to get rid of as much as possible
of the the
-glucan cell walls and some of the insoluble protein which
would otherwise restrict access of enzymes to the starch granules. At the
same time enzymes are developed which will, in the brewhouse, convert
the starch into soluble sugars.
In the maltings the barley is steeped to raise the water content from
12% to around 45%. This process takes about 48 hours and consists of
two or three periods when the grain is totally immersed in water, inter-

1
2 Chapter 1

husk
distal end

embryo
awn

scutellum

aleurone layer
starchy endosperm

Figure 1.1 Diagrammatic view (longitudinal section) of a barley grain

spersed with ‘air rests’ when the water is drained off and fresh humidified
air is blown through the grain bed to provide oxygen. The increased
water content stimulates respiration in the embryo and hydrates the
stores of starch in the endosperm. As the embryo activity increases,
gibberellins are produced. These are natural plant hormones that diffuse
into the aleurone, where they stimulate the production of hydrolytic
enzymes during germination.
The moist grain is then allowed to germinate for a few days. During this
time cool humidified air is again blown through the grain bed to keep the
temperature down to around 16 °C and to stop the grain drying out. As
gibberellins diffuse into the endosperm from the embryo they stimulate
the aleurone cells to produce hydrolytic enzymes. These include
amylolytic enzymes, which break down starch, proteolytic enzymes,
which attack the protein, and cellulytic enzymes, which break down cell
walls. Proteolytic enzymes include carboxypeptidases, which release one
amino acid at a time starting from the carboxyl end of an amino acid
chain, and endopeptidases, which can break peptide bonds in the centre
of long amino acid chains. They can therefore very rapidly reduce the size
of a protein or polypeptide. Next
-glucanases are produced. These break
down the endosperm cell walls, making it easier for the other enzymes to
diffuse out into the starchy endosperm. Last, but not by any means least,
amylolytic enzymes are produced. The two most important are -amylase
and
-amylase, both of which can break down -1,4 bonds. A debranch-
ing enzyme, which can attack the 1,6 bonds, is also produced, but this
enzyme is quite sensitive to heat and so is normally inactivated during
malt kilning.
All of these enzymes must diffuse into the starchy endosperm and begin
the process of breaking down the cellular structure (the cell walls) and the
An Overview of the Malting and Brewing Processes 3

Barley

Water Steeping

Steeped barley

Germination
circa 16 ˚C, 3–4 days

Green malt

Kilning
45 ˚C rising to 85 ˚C,
24 hours (lager malt)
or 90–100 ˚C (ale malt)

Ale and Lager

Malt

Figure 1.2 Simplified flow diagram of the malting process

stores of protein, starch and lipid in order to provide nutrients for the new
plant. This process is strictly controlled by the maltster, who curtails it
after four or five days. By this time most of the cell walls should have been
digested, since if these are allowed to remain they will cause processing
difficulties at a later stage. Part of the high molecular weight, insoluble
protein will also have been broken down into smaller fragments (peptides
and amino acids) and sufficient amylolytic enzymes will have been syn-
thesised. Most of the starch remains intact, except for the small granules,
which are the first to be digested during malting. If these small granules
persist in the malt they can cause filtration problems for the brewer
during the later stages of beer production.
4 Chapter 1

The damp ‘green’ malt is dried in a kiln to prevent further enzyme

activity and to produce a stable material which can be safely stored until
needed for brewing. The kilning process also removes the volatile compo-
nents responsible for undesirable ‘grainy’ flavours, and encourages the
development of more attractive malty, biscuity flavours. This flavour
development depends very much upon temperature and thus can be
controlled by the maltster in order to produce a wide range of malts. The
majority of commercial malts are fairly lightly kilned (up to 85 °C) in
order to produce lager malts. In the UK a substantial proportion is
kilned to a higher temperature (usually 90—100 °C) to give somewhat
darker and more flavoursome pale ale malts. Higher temperatures (up to
200 °C) are used to produce speciality malts with flavours ranging from
the toffee, caramel flavours of crystal malts to the sharp astringent
flavours of roasted malts. These different malts can then be used by the
brewer to produce beers with a wide range of flavours and colours (see
Chapter 3).

MASHING
The brewing process converts the malt starch first to soluble sugars, then
uses yeast to ferment these to alcohol. At the same time proteins are
broken down into amino acids which can be used by the yeast as
nutrients, coincidentally producing characteristic flavour compounds.
In the brewhouse the malt is crushed in a mill. Often a roller mill will be
used — this keeps the husk largely intact so that it can serve as an aid to
filtration later in processing. The crushed malt (‘grist’) is mixed with hot
water in the mash tun and the whole mash is held at around 65 °C for
about one hour. This temperature is chosen as it is the temperature at
which malt (i.e. barley) starch will gelatinise — making it more susceptible
to enzyme attack.
Sometimes other cereals (‘adjuncts’) may form part of the grist, in order
to provide specific qualities in the beer. For example, small quantities of
wheat are often used in ales to enhance the beer foam, while unmalted rice
and maize grits may be used to improve the flavour stability of light-
flavoured lagers. The more intensely kilned malts (crystal, amber, or
brown malts) are used to provide colour and flavour in traditional British
ales, while roasted malt and barley are used in the darker porters and
stouts (see Chapter 3).
Like barley starch, wheat starch also gelatinises at 65 °C. Rice and
maize starches gelatinise at higher temperatures, so if either of these
cereals is used as an adjunct, it must be pre-cooked in a separate vessel
(known as a cereal cooker) before being added to the mash.
An Overview of the Malting and Brewing Processes 5

Grist + Water
Ale or lager malt (90–100%)
speciality malts (0–10%)

Mash
Lautering
(wort separation)

Sweet Wort + Spent grains

Hops

Bitter Wort

Yeast Fermentation

Green beer

Maturation

Filtration
Beer

Figure 1.3 Simplified flow diagram of the brewing process

6 Chapter 1

In some mashing systems, particularly those used for lagers, where the
malts may have been less completely modified during malting, the mash
may initially be held at a lower temperature (around 45 °C) to allow the
breakdown of cell walls and protein which commenced in malting to
continue. After about 30 minutes the temperature is then raised to 70 °C.
At this temperature the starch will gelatinise and it can then be broken
down by the amylase enzymes in the mash.
During mashing the amylolytic enzymes in the malt break down the
starch into fermentable sugars. Cereal starch consists of approximately
75% amylopectin and 25% amylose. Amylopectin is a very large, bran-
ched molecule (the molecular weight has been estimated at several mil-
lion) made up of glucose units linked by -1,4 bonds (which give linear
chains) and -1,6 bonds (which give branch points). On average, each
branch is made up of around 25 glucose units. Amylose, on the other
hand, is a linear molecule made up of up to 2000 glucose units linked by
-1,4 bonds only (Figure 1.4).
Both -amylase and
-amylase can hydrolyse -1,4 bonds.
-Amylase
attacks from the outer reducing ends of the amylopectin and amylose
molecules, releasing free maltose (two glucose units), but stopping when it
reaches an -1,6 bond. In contrast, -amylase attacks lengths of -1,4
chains between branch points, releasing smaller, branched dextrins with
long straight side-chains. These provide more substrates for
-amylase
action. - and
-Amylase acting together reduce amylose to maltose,
maltotriose and glucose, but amylopectin gives rise, in addition, to many
small branched dextrins which cannot be further broken down during
mashing.
Thus after the conversion stage (mashing) a sweet syrupy liquid known
as ‘wort’ is produced. This liquid contains mainly maltose and glucose,
which are fermentable, together with significant quantities of small bran-
ched dextrins, which are not fermentable. There may be traces of larger
straight-chain dextrins, the amount of which depends upon the enzymatic
activity of the malt and the mashing conditions, and thus can to some
extent be manipulated by the brewer. No starch should survive the
mashing stage. The wort will also contain soluble protein, polypeptides
and amino acids.
In traditional British ale mashing, the wort is separated from the spent
grist in the mash tun by being allowed to filter through the spent grain
bed into the next vessel. Hot water (usually at least 70 °C) is sprayed onto
the top of the grain bed in order to extract and wash out the soluble
components. This is known as sparging. A more usual practice nowadays
is for the whole mash to be transferred to a separate vessel, the lauter tun.
This vessel has a perforated base plate which allows the wort to run
An Overview of the Malting and Brewing Processes 7

CH2OH CH2OH CH2OH CH2OH

6
5 O
O O O
4 1 4
3 2 O O O

amylose α -1,4 bonds

CH2OH CH2OH
O O
1
O O

CH2OH 6 CH2 CH2OH

O O O

O O O

amylopectin α -1,4 and -1,6

α
Non-reducing end

Amylose

Amylopectin

Non-
reducing end Key = glucose unit

Figure 1.4 Structure of amylose and amylopectin

through into the next vessel, the kettle or copper, leaving the insoluble
remains of the malt, (the spent grains) behind in the lauter tun.

WORT BOILING
In the kettle, hops or hop extracts are added and the wort is boiled quite
vigorously. This has three effects:
8 Chapter 1

OH
R O
R

HO O
HO HO
OH
CO

α -acids iso- α-acids

Acyl side chain (R)

___ COCH CH(CH ) = Humulone

2 32
___ COCH(CH ) = Cohumulone
32
___
COCH(CH3)CH2 CH3 = Adhumulone

Figure 1.5 Structure of hop acids

∑ The wort is sterilised.

∑ Much of the soluble protein is coagulated and can be separated off as
the ‘trub’.
∑ The -acids in the hops are extracted into the wort and isomerised into
iso--acids, which provide the characteristic bitter taste of beer (see
Figure 1.5).

In addition to -acids, hops contain essential oils, which contribute to the

hoppy, floral and spicy aromas in beer (see Chapter 3). Most of these
compounds are volatile and can therefore be lost by evaporation during
boiling. In order to effect a suitable compromise between sufficient
boiling to coagulate protein and isomerise the hop acids, but still retain
the desired quantity of aroma compounds, the brewer may add part of the
hop recipe part-way through the boil.
Also during boiling, browning reactions take place between the reduc-
ing sugars and the primary amines (particularly amino acids) in the wort,
resulting in an increase in wort colour and some loss of free amino
nitrogen. Browning reactions are complex and still not completely char-
acterised, but basically consist of condensation reactions between simple
sugars, such as glucose, with primary amines (for example the amino acid
glycine) to give aldosylamines. These are relatively unstable compounds
and can undergo Amadori rearrangement to form ketosamines, which
An Overview of the Malting and Brewing Processes 9

condense with another aldose molecule to form diketosamines. Reacting

in the enol form, these diketosamines can undergo further condensation
reactions with additional amines to form a mixture of reddish-brown
pigments, most of which contain a furfural ring. A simplified reaction
pathway is shown in Figure 1.6. To some extent the amino acids act as
catalysts, and the increase in colour is much greater than the loss of
amino acids.

WORT CLARIFICATION
After boiling, the coagulated protein or ‘trub’, together with the spent
hops, must be removed. Traditionally this was achieved by filtering the
wort through the bed of spent hop cones. In modern breweries most of the
hops are in the form of pellets or extracts, with much less waste leafy
material to form a filter bed, and a vessel known as a whirlpool is used
instead. The hot bitter wort is pumped into the whirlpool tangentially.
The resulting swirling motion causes the trub to collect at the centre of
the vessel as a conical mound. The clear wort can be removed from an exit
pipe, which is situated to the side of the vessel. The bitter wort is then
cooled to fermentation temperature by passing it through a paraflow heat
exchanger.

FERMENTATION
Fermentation takes place at 7—13 °C for lagers or 16—18 °C for ales. Yeast
is mixed with the cooled wort and the mixture pumped into the ferment-
ing vessel. During fermentation the yeast takes up amino acids and sugars
from the wort. The sugars are metabolised, with carbon dioxide and ethyl
alcohol being produced under the anaerobic conditions found in brewery
fermentations (Figure 1.7):

C H O ; 2CO ; 2C H OH (1.1)
     
The amino acids are used for cell growth, so that at the end of fermenta-
tion the yeast will typically have increased its mass by up to 10-fold. The
yeast also produces a number of flavour-active volatile compounds,
mainly higher alcohols and esters, the exact profile of which will vary
from strain to strain. (More details of the contribution of yeast to beer
flavour are given in Chapter 3.) Thus the yeast is responsible for much of
the unique character which distinguishes one beer from another. Most
brewers have their own strain or strains, which may have been in use since
the brewery was founded, decades or even centuries ago.
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
 Morland’s brother-in-law, the painter and engraver James Ward, born in 1769 and dying in 1859,
united this old English school with the modern. The portrait which accompanies the obituary notice in
the Art Journal is that of a very aged gentleman, with a grey beard and thick, white, bristly hair. The
pictures which he painted when he had this appearance—and they are the most familiar—were
exceedingly weak and insipid works. In comparison with Morland’s broad, liquid, and harmonious
painting, that of Ward seems burnished, sparkling, flaunting, anecdotic, and petty. But James Ward was
not always old James Ward. In his early days he was one of the greatest and manliest artists of the
English school, with whom only Briton Rivière can be compared amongst the moderns. When his
“Lioness” appeared in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1816 he was justly hailed as the best animal
painter after Snyders, and from that time one masterpiece followed another for ten long years. What
grace and power there are in his horses and dogs! In pictures of this sort Stubbs was graceful and
delicate; Ward painted the same horse in as sporting a manner and with the same knowledge, but with
an artistic power such as no one had before him. His field of work was wide-reaching. He painted little
girls with the thoroughly English feeling of Morland, and had the whole animal world for his domain.
Lions, snakes, cats, pigs, oxen, cows, sheep, swans, fowls, frogs are the characters in his pictures. And
characters they were, for he never humanised the looks of his four-footed models, as others did later.
The home of his animals is not the drawing-room, but the woods and meadows, the air and the
gardens. His broad, weighty manner was transformed first into extravagant virtuosity and then into
pettiness of style during the last thirty years of his life, when he became senile. His reputation paled
more than he deserved before the star of the world-famous Landseer.

MORLAND. THE CORN BIN.

 The most popular animal painter, not merely of England but of the whole century, was Edwin
Landseer. For fifty years his works formed the chief features of attraction in the Royal Academy.
Engravings from him had such a circulation in the country that in the sixties there was scarcely a house
in which there did not hang one of his horses or dogs or stags. Even the Continent was flooded with
engravings of his pictures, and Landseer suffered greatly from this popularity. He is much better than
the reproductions with their fatal gloss allow any one to suppose, and his pictures can be judged by
them just as little as can Raphael’s “School of Athens” from Jacobi’s engraving.

Edwin Landseer came of a family of artists.

His father, who was an engraver, sent him out
into the free world of nature as a boy, and
made him sketch donkeys and goats and
sheep. When he was fourteen he went to
Haydon, the prophet on matters of art; and, on
the advice of this singular being, studied the
sculptures of the Parthenon. He “anatomised
animals under my eyes,” writes Haydon,
“copied my anatomical drawings, and applied
my principles of instruction to animal painting.
His genius, directed in this fashion, has, as a
matter of fact, arrived at satisfactory results.”
Landseer was the spoilt child of fortune. There
is no other English painter who can boast of
having been made a member of the Royal
Academy at twenty-four. In high favour at
Court, honoured by the fashionable world, and
tenderly treated by criticism, he went on his
way triumphant. The region over which he held
sway was narrow, but he stood out in it as in
life, powerful and commanding. The exhibition
of his pictures which took place after his death Portfolio.
in 1873 contained three hundred and fourteen MORLAND. GOING TO THE FAIR.

oil paintings and one hundred and forty-six

sketches. The property which he left amounted to £160,000; and a further sum of £55,000 was realised
by the sale of his unsold pictures. Even Meissonier, the best paid painter of the century, did not leave
behind him five and a half million francs.

One reason of Landseer’s artistic success is perhaps due to that in him which was inartistic—to his
effort to make animals more beautiful than they really are, and to make them the medium for
expressing human sentiment. All the dogs and horses and stags which he painted after 1855, and
through which he was made specially familiar to the great public, are arrayed in their Sunday clothes,
their glossiest hide and their most magnificent horns. And in addition to this he “Darwinises” them: that
is to say, he tries to make his animals more than animals; he lends a human sentimental trait to animal
character; and that is what distinguishes him to his disadvantage from really great animal painters like
Potter, Snyders, Troyon, Jadin, and Rosa Bonheur. He paints the human temperament beneath the
animal mask. His stags have expressive countenances, and his dogs appear to be gifted with reason
and even speech. At one moment there is a philosophic dignity in their behaviour, and at another a
frivolity in their pleasures. Landseer discovered the sentimentality of dogs, and treated them as capable
of culture. His celebrated picture “Jack in Office” is almost insulting in its characterisation: there they
are, Jack the sentry, an old female dog like a poor gentlewoman, another dog like a professional beggar,
and so on. And this habit of bringing animals on the stage, as if they were the actors of tragical,
melodramatic, or farcical scenes, made him a peculiar favourite with the great mass of people. Nor were
his picture-stories merely easy to read and understand; the characteristic titles he invented for each of
them—“Alexander and Diogenes,” “A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society,” and the like—
excited curiosity as much as the most carefully selected name of a novel. But this search after points
and sentimental anecdotes only came into prominence in his last period, when his technique had
degenerated and given way to a shiny polish and a forced elegance which obliged him to provide
extraneous attractions. His popularity would not be so great, but his artistic importance would be quite
the same, if these last pictures did not exist at all.

MORLAND. THE RETURN FROM MARKET.

But the middle period of Landseer, ranging from 1840 to 1850, contains masterpieces which set him
by the side of the best animal painters of all times and nations. The well-known portrait of a
Newfoundland dog of 1838; that of the Prince Consort’s favourite greyhound of 1841; “The Otter
Speared” of 1844, with its panting and yelping pack brought to a standstill beneath a high wall of rock;
the dead doe which a fawn is unsuspectingly approaching, in “A Random Shot,” 1848; “The Lost Sheep”
of 1850, that wanders frightened and bleating through a wide and lonely landscape covered with snow,
—these and many other pictures, in their animation and simple naturalness, are precious examples of
the fresh and delicate observation peculiar to him at that time. Landseer’s portrait reveals to us a robust
and serious man, with a weather-beaten face, a short white beard, and a snub bulldog nose. Standing
six feet high, and having the great heavy
figure of a Teuton stepping out of his
aboriginal forest, he was indeed much more
like a country gentleman than a London
artist. He was a sportsman who wandered
about all day long in the air with a gun on
his arm, and he painted his animal pictures
with all the love and joy of a child of nature.
That accounts for their strength, their
convincing power, and their vivid force. It is
as if he had become possessed of a magic
cap with which he could draw close to
animals without being observed, and
surprise their nature and their inmost life.
Cassell & Co.
Landseer’s subject-matter and conception LANDSEER. A DISTINGUISHED MEMBER OF THE HUMANE
of life are indicated by the pictures which SOCIETY.

have been named. Old masters like Snyders

and Rubens had represented the contrast between man and beast in their boar and lion hunts. It was
not wild nature that Landseer depicted, but nature tamed. Rubens, Snyders, and Delacroix displayed
their horses, dogs, lions, and tigers in bold action, or in the flame of passion. But Landseer generally
introduced his animals in quiet situations—harmless and without fear—in the course of their ordinary
life.
 Mag. of Art.
LANDSEER. THE LAST MOURNER AT THE SHEPHERD’S GRAVE.

Horses, which Leonardo, Rubens, Velasquez, Wouwerman, and the earlier English artists delighted to
render, he painted but seldom, and when he painted them it was with a less penetrating
comprehension. But lions, which had been represented in savage passion or in quiet dignity by artists
from Rubens to Decamps, were for him also a subject of long and exhaustive studies, which had their
results in the four colossal lions round the base of the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square. Here the
Englishman makes a great advance on Thorwaldsen, who designed the model for the monument in
Lucerne without ever having seen a lion. Landseer’s brutes, both as they are painted and as they are
cast in bronze, are genuine lions, cruel and catlike, although in savageness and bold passion they are
not to be compared with those of Delacroix, nor with those of his elder compatriot, James Ward. On the
other hand, stags and roes were really first introduced into painting by Landseer. Those of Robert Hills,
who had previously been reckoned the best painter of stags, are timid, suspicious creatures, while
Landseer’s are the true kings of the forest, the shooting of which ought to be punished as an act of
assassination. His principal field of study was the Highlands. Here he painted these proud creatures
fighting on the mountain slopes, swimming the lake, or as they stand at a gaze in their quiet beauty.
With what a bold spirit they raise their heads to snuff the mountain air, whilst their antlers show their
delight in battle and the joy of victory. And how gentle and timid is the noble, defenceless roe in
Landseer’s pictures.
 LANDSEER. HIGH LIFE. LANDSEER. LOW LIF

He had also a delight in painting sheep lost in a snow-storm. But dogs were his peculiar specialty.
Landseer discovered the dog. That of Snyders was a treacherous, snarling cur; that of Bewick a robber
and a thief. Landseer has made the dog the companion of man, an adjunct of human society, the
generous friend and true comrade who is the last mourner at the shepherd’s grave. Landseer first
studied his noble countenance and his thoughtful eyes, and in doing so he opened a new province to
art, in which Briton Rivière went further at a later period.

But yet another and still wider province was opened to continental nations by the art of England. In
an epoch of archæological resuscitations and romantic regrets for the past, it brought French and
German painters to a consciousness that the man of the nineteenth century in his daily life might be a
perfectly legitimate subject for art. Engravings after the best pictures of Wilkie hang round the walls of
Louis Knaus’s reception-room in Berlin. And that in itself betrays to us a fragment of the history of art.
The painters who saw the English people with the eyes of Walter Scott, Fielding, Goldsmith, and
Dickens were a generation in advance of those who depicted the German people in the spirit of
Immermann, Auerbach, Gustav Freytag, and Fritz Reuter. The English advanced quietly on the road
trodden by Hogarth in the eighteenth century, whilst upon the Continent the nineteenth century had
almost completed half its course before art left anything which will allow future generations to see the
men of the period as they really were. Since the days of Fielding and Goldsmith the novel of manners
had been continually growing. Burns, the poet of the plough, and Wordsworth, the singer of rustic folk,
had given a vogue to that poetry of peasant life and those village tales which have since gone the round
of all Europe. England began at that time to become the richest country in the world, and great fortunes
were made. Painters were thus obliged to provide for the needs of a new and wealthy middle class. This
fact gives us the explanation both of the merits and the faults which are characteristic of English genre
painting.

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century David Wilkie, the English Knaus, was the chief genre
painter of the world. Born in 1785 in the small Scotch village of Cults, where his father was the
clergyman, he passed a happy childhood, and possibly had to thank his youthful impressions for the
consistent cheerfulness, the good-humour and kindliness that smile out of his pictures, and make such a
contrast with Hogarth’s biting acerbity. At fourteen he entered the Edinburgh School of Art, where he
worked for four years under the historical painter John Graham. Having returned to Cults, he painted his
landscapes. A fair which he saw in the neighbouring village gave the impulse for his earliest picture of
country life, “Pitlessie Fair.” He sold it for five and twenty pounds, and determined in 1805 to try his luck
with this sum in London. In the very next year his “Village Politicians” excited attention in the exhibition.
From that time he was a popular artist. Every one of his numerous pictures—“The Blind Fiddler,” “The
Card Players,” “The Rent Day,” “The Cut Finger,” “The Village Festival”—called forth a storm of applause.
After a short residence in Paris, where the Louvre gave him a more intimate knowledge of the Dutch,
came his masterpieces, “Blind-Man’s Buff,” “Distraining for Rent,” “Reading the Will,” “The Rabbit on the
Wall,” “The Penny Wedding,” “The Chelsea Pensioners,” and so forth. Even later, after he had become an
Academician, he kept to plain and simple themes, in spite of the reproaches of his colleagues, who
thought that art was vulgarised by the treatment of subjects that contained so little dignity. It was only
at the end of his life that he became untrue to himself. His reverence for Teniers and Ostade was not
sufficient to outweigh the impression made on him during a tour taken in 1825 through Italy, Spain,
Holland, and Germany, by the artistic treasures of the Continent, and especially Murillo and Velasquez.
He said he had long lived in darkness, but from that time forth could say with the great Correggio:
“Anch’ io sono pittore.” He renounced all that he had painted before which had made him famous, and
showed himself to be one of the many great artists of those years who had no individuality, or ventured
to have none. He would have been the Burns of painting had he remained as he was. And thus he
offered further evidence that the museums and the Muses are contradictory conceptions; since the
modern painter always runs the risk of falling helplessly from one influence into another, where he is
bent on combining the historical student of art with the artist. Of the pictures that he exhibited after his
return in 1829, two dealt with Italian and three with Spanish subjects. The critics were loud in praise;
he had added a fresh branch of laurel to his crown. Yet, historically considered, he would stand on a
higher pedestal if he had never seen more than a dozen good pictures of Teniers, Ostade, Metsu, Jan
Steen, and Brouwer. Now he began to copy his travelling sketches in a spiritless fashion; he only
represented pifferari, smugglers, and monks, who, devoid of all originality, might have been painted by
one of the Düsseldorfers. Even “John Knox Preaching,” which is probably the best picture of his last
period, is no exception.

“He seemed to me,” writes Delacroix, who saw him in Paris after his return from Spain,—“he seemed
to me to have been carried utterly out of his depth by the pictures he had seen. How is it that a man of
his age can be so influenced by works which are radically opposed to his own? However, he died soon
after, and, as I have been told, in a very melancholy state of mind.” Death overtook him in 1841, on
board the steamer Oriental, just as he was returning from a tour in Turkey. At half-past eight in the
evening the vessel was brought to, and as the lights of the beacon mingled with those of the stars the
waters passed over the corpse of David Wilkie.
 Mansell Photo
LANDSEER. JACK IN OFFICE.
 WILKIE. BLIND-MAN’S B

In judging his position in the history of art, only those works come into consideration which he
executed before that journey of 1825. Then he drew as a labour of love the familiar scenes of the
household hearth, the little dramas, the comic or touching episodes that take place in the village, the
festivals, the dancing, and the sports of the country-folk, and their meeting in the ale-house. At this
time, when as a young painter he merely expressed himself and was ignorant of the efforts of
continental painting, he was an artist of individuality. In the village he became a great man, and here
his fame was decided; he painted rustics. Even when he first saw the old masters in the National Gallery
their immediate effect on him was merely to influence his technique. And by their aid Wilkie gradually
became an admirable master of technical detail. His first picture, “Pitlessie Fair,” in its hardness of colour
recalled a Dutch painter of the type of Jan Molenaer; but from that time his course was one of constant
progress. In “The Village Politicians” the influence of Teniers first made itself felt, and it prevailed until
1816. In this year, when he painted the pretty sketch for “Blind-Man’s Buff,” a warm gold hue took the
place of the cool silver tone; and instead of Teniers, Ostade became his model. The works in his Ostade
manner are rich in colour and deep and clear in tone. Finally, it was Rembrandt’s turn to become his
guiding-star, and “The Parish Beadle,” in the National Gallery—a scene of arrest of the year 1822—
clearly shows with what brilliant success he tried his luck with Rembrandt’s dewy chiaroscuro. It was
only in his last period that he lost all these technical qualities. His “Knox” of 1832 is hard and cold and
inharmonious in colour.

Hanfstaengl.
WILKIE. A GUERILLA COUNCIL OF WAR IN A SPANISH POSADA.

So long as he kept from historical painting, art meant for him the same thing as the portrayal of
domestic life. Painting, he said, had no other aim than to reproduce nature and to seek truth.
Undoubtedly this must be applied to Wilkie himself with considerable limitation. Wilkie painted simple
fragments of nature just as little as Hogarth; he invented scenes. Nor was he even gifted with much
power of invention. But he had a fund of innocent humour, although there were times when it was in
danger of becoming much too childlike. “Blind-Man’s Buff,” “The Village Politicians,” and “The Village
Festival,” pictures which have become so popular through the medium of engraving, contain all the
characteristics of his power of playful observation. He had no ambition to be a moralist, like Hogarth,
but just as little did he paint the rustic as he is. He dealt only with the absurdities and minor accidents
of life. His was one of those happy dispositions which neither sorrow nor dream nor excite themselves,
but see everything from the humorous side: he enjoyed his own jests, and looked at life as at a pure
comedy; the serious part of it escaped him altogether. His peasantry know nothing of social problems;
free from want and drudgery, they merely spend their time over trifles and amuse themselves—
themselves and the frequenters of the exhibition, for whom they are taking part in a comedy on canvas.
If Hogarth had a biting, sarcastic, scourging, and disintegrating genius, Wilkie is one of those people
who cause one no lasting excitement, but are always satisfied to be humorous, and laugh with a
contented appreciation over their own jokes.
 Seemann, Leipzig.
WILKIE. THE BLIND FIDDLER.

And in general such is the keynote of this English genre. All that was done in it during the years
immediately following is more or less comprised in the works of the Scotch “little master”; otherwise it
courts the assistance of English literature, which is always rich in humorists and excellent writers of
anecdote and story. In painting, as in literature, the English delight in detail, which by its dramatic,
anecdotic, or humorous point is intended to have the interest of a short story. Or perhaps one should
rather say that, since the English came to painting as novices, they began tentatively on that first step
on which art had stood in earlier centuries as long as it was still “the people’s spelling-book.” It is a
typical form of development, and repeats itself constantly. All painting begins in narrative. First it is the
subject which has a fascination for the artist, and by the aid of it he casts a spell over his public. The
simplification of motives, the capacity for taking a thing in at a single glance, and finding a simple joy in
its essentially pictorial integrity, is of later growth. Even with the Dutch, who were so eminently gifted
with a sense for what is pictorial, the picture of manners was at first epical. Church festivals, skating
parties, and events which could be represented in an ample and detailed fashion were the original
materials of the genre picture, which only later contented itself with a purely artistic study of one out of
countless groups. This period of apprenticeship, which may be called the period of interesting subject-
matter, was what England was now going through; and England had to go through it, since she had the
civilisation by which it is invariably produced.
 WILKIE. THE PENNY WEDDING.

Just as the first genre pictures of the Flemish school announced the appearance of a bourgeoisie, so
in the England of the beginning of the century a new plebeian, middle-class society had taken the place
of the patrons of earlier days, and this middle class set its seal upon manners and communicated its
spirit to painting. Prosperity, culture, travel, reading, and leisure, everything which had been the
privilege of individuals, now became the common property of the great mass of men. They prized art,
but they demanded from it substantial nourishment. That two colours in connection with straight and
curved lines are enough for the production of infinite harmonies was still a profound secret. “You are
free to be painters if you like,” artists were told, “but only on the understanding that you are amusing
and instructive; if you have no story to tell we shall yawn.” When they comply with these demands,
artists are inclined to grow fond of sermonising and develop into censors of the public morals, almost
into lay preachers.

Or, if the aim of painting lies in its narrative power, there is a natural tendency to represent the
pleasant rather than the unpleasant facts of life, which is the cause of this one-sided character of genre
painting. Everything that is not striking and out of the way—in other words, the whole poetry of
ordinary life—is left untouched. Wilkie only paints the rustic on some peculiar occasion, at merry-making
and ceremonial events; and he depicts him as a being of a different species from the townsman,
because he seeks to gain his effects principally by humorous episodes, and aims at situations which are
proper to a novel.
 WILKIE. THE FIRST EARRING. NEWTON. YORICK AND THE GRISET

Baptisms and dances, funerals and weddings, carousals and bridal visits are his favourite subjects; to
which may be added the various contrasts offered by peasant life where it is brought into contact with
the civilisation of cities—the country cousin come to town, the rustic closeted with a lawyer, and the
like. A continual roguishness enlivens his pictures and makes comical figures out of most of these good
people. He amuses himself at their expense, exposes their little lies, their thrift, their folly, their
pretensions, and the absurdities with which their narrow circle of life has provided them. He pokes fun,
and is sly and farcical. But the hard and sour labour of ordinary peasant life is left on one side, since it
offers no material for humour and anecdote.

Through this limitation painting renounced the best part of its strength. To a man of pictorial vision
nature is a gallery of magnificent pictures, and one which is as wide and far-reaching as the world. But
whoever seeks salvation in narrative painting soon reaches the end of his material. In the life of any
man there are only three or four events that are worth the trouble of telling; Wilkie told more, and he
became tiresome in consequence. We are willing to accept these anecdotes as true, but they are
threadbare. Things of this sort may be found in the gaily-bound little books which are given as
Christmas presents to children. It is not exhilarating to learn that worldly marriages have their
inconveniences, that there is a pleasure in talking scandal about one’s friends behind their backs, that a
son causes pain to his mother by his excesses, and that egoism is an unpleasant failing. All that is true,
but it is too true. We are irritated by the intrusiveness of this course of instruction. Wilkie paints insipid
subjects, and by one foolery after another he has made painting into a toy for good children. And good
children play the principal parts in these pictures.
 As a painter, one of George Morland’s pupils, William Collins, threw the world into ecstasies by his
pictures of children. Out of one hundred and twenty-one which he exhibited in the Academy in the
course of forty years the principal are: the picture of “The Little Flute-Player,” “The Sale of the Pet
Lamb,” “Boys with a Bird’s Nest,” “The Fisher’s Departure,” “Scene in a Kentish Hop-Garden,” and the
picture of the swallows. The most popular were “Happy as a King”—a small boy whom his elder
playmates have set upon a garden railing, from which he looks down laughing proudly—and “Rustic
Civility”—children who have drawn up like soldiers, by a fence, so as to salute some one who is
approaching. But it is clear from the titles of such pictures that in this province English genre painting
did not free itself from the reproach of being episodic. Collins was richer in ideas than Meyer of Bremen.
His children receive earrings, sit on their mother’s knee, play with her in the garden, watch her sewing,
read aloud to her from their spelling-book, learn their lessons, and are frightened of the geese and hens
which advance in a terrifying fashion towards them in the poultry-yard. He is an admirable painter of
children at the family table, of the pleasant chatter of the little ones, of the father watching his sleeping
child of an evening by the light of the lamp, with his heart full of pride and joy because he has the
consciousness of working for those who are near to him. Being naturally very fond of children, he has
painted the life of little people with evident enjoyment of all its variations, and yet not in a thoroughly
credible fashion. Chardin painted the poetry of the child-world. His little ones have no suspicion of the
painter being near them. They are harmlessly occupied with themselves, and in their ordinary clothes.
Those of Collins look as if they were repeating a copybook maxim at a school examination. They know
that the eyes of all the sightseers in the exhibition are fixed upon them, and they are doing their utmost
to be on their best behaviour. They have a lack of unconsciousness. One would like to say to them: “My
dear children, always be good.” But no one is grateful to the painter for taking from children their
childishness, and for bringing into vogue that codling which had its way for so long afterwards in the
pictures of children.

Gilbert Stuart Newton, an American by birth, who lived in England from 1820 to 1835, devoted
himself to the illustration of English authors. Like Wilkie, he has a certain historical importance, because
he devoted himself with great zeal to a study of the Dutchmen of the seventeenth century and to the
French painters of the eighteenth, at a time when these masters were entirely out of fashion on the
Continent and sneered at as representatives of “the deepest corruption.” Dow and Terborg were his
peculiar ideals; and although the colour of his pictures is certainly heavy and common compared with
that of his models, it is artistic, and shows study when one thinks of contemporary productions on the
Continent. His works (“Lear attended by Cordelia,” “The Vicar of Wakefield restoring his Daughter to her
Mother,” “The Prince of Spain’s Visit to Catalina” from Gil Blas, and “Yorick and the Grisette” from
Sterne), like the pictures of the Düsseldorfers, would most certainly have lost in actuality but for the
interest provided by the literary passages; yet they are favourably distinguished from the literary
illustrations of the Düsseldorfers by the want of any sort of idealism. While the painters of the Continent
in such pictures almost invariably fell into a rounded, generalising ideal of beauty, Newton had the scene
played by actors and painted them realistically. The result was a theatrical realism, but the way in which
the theatrical effects are studied and the palpableness of the histrionic gestures are so convincingly true
to nature that his pictures seem like records of stage art in London about the year 1830.
WEBSTER. THE RUBBER.
 C. R. LESLIE. SANCHO AND THE DUCHESS.

Charles Robert Leslie, known as an author by

his pleasant book on Constable and a highly
conservative Handbook for Young Painters, had
a similar repértoire, and rendered in oils
Shakespeare, Cervantes, Fielding, Sterne,
Goldsmith, and Molière, with more or less
ability. The National Gallery has an exceedingly
prosaic and colourless picture of his, “Sancho
Panza in the Apartment of the Duchess.” Some
that are in the South Kensington Museum are
better; for example, “The Taming of the
Shrew,” “The Dinner at Mr. Page’s House” from
The Merry Wives of Windsor, and “Sir Roger de
Coverley.” His finest and best-known work is
“My Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman,”
which charmingly illustrates the pretty scene in
Tristram Shandy: “’I protest, madam,’ said my
Uncle Toby, ‘I can see nothing whatever in your
eye.’ ‘It is not in the white!’ said Mrs. Wadman.
My Uncle Toby looked with might and main into
the pupil.” As in Newton’s works, so in Leslie’s
too, there is such a strong dose of realism that MULREADY. FAIR TIME.
his pictures will always keep their value as
historical documents—not for the year 1630 but for 1830. As a colourist he was—in his later works at
any rate—a delicate imitator of the Dutch chiaroscuro; and in the history of art he occupies a position
similar to that of Diez in Germany, and was esteemed in the same way, even in later years, when the
young Pre-Raphaelite school began its embittered war against “brown sauce”—the same war which a
generation afterwards was waged in Germany by Liebermann and his followers against the school of
Diez.

Mulready, thirty-two of whose pictures are preserved in the South Kensington Museum, is in his
technique almost more delicate than Leslie, and he has learnt a great deal from Metsu. By preference
he took his subjects out of Goldsmith. “Choosing the Wedding Gown” and “The Whistonian Controversy”
would make pretty illustrations for an édition de luxe of The Vicar of Wakefield. Otherwise he too had a
taste for immortalising children, by turns lazy and industrious, at their tea or playing by the water’s
edge.

From Thomas Webster, the fourth of these kindly, childlike masters, yet more inspiriting facts are to
be obtained. He has informed the world that at a not very remote period of English history all the
agricultural labourers were quite content with their lot. No one ever quarrelled with his landlord, or sat
in a public-house and let his family starve. The highest bliss of these excellent people was to stay at
home and play with their children by the light of a wax-candle. Webster’s rustics, children, and
schoolmasters are the citizens of an ideal planet, but the little country is a pleasant world. His pictures
are so harmless in intention, so neat and accurate in drawing, and so clear and luminous in colour that
they may be seen with pleasure even at the present day.
 Cassell &
FRITH. POVERTY AND WEA

The last of the group, William Powell Frith, was the most copious in giving posterity information about
the manners and costumes of his contemporaries, and would be still more authentic if life had not
seemed to him so genial and roseate. His pictures represent scenes of the nineteenth century, but they
seem like events of the good old times. At that period people were undoubtedly good and innocent and
happy. They had no income-tax and no vices and worries, and all went to heaven and felt in good
spirits. And so they do in Frith’s pictures, only not so naturally as in Ostade and Beham. For example, he
goes on the beach at a fashionable English watering-place during the season, in July or August. The
geniality which predominates here is quite extraordinary. Children are splashing in the sea, young ladies
flirting, niggers playing the barrel-organ and women singing ballads to its strains; every one is doing his
utmost to look well, and the pair of beggars who are there for the sake of contrast have long become
resigned to their fate. In his racecourse pictures everything is brought together which on such occasions
is representative of London life: all types, from the baronet to the ragman; all beauties, from the lady to
the street-walker. A rustic has to lose his money, or a famished acrobat to turn his pockets inside out to
assure himself that there is really nothing in them. His picture of the gaming-table in Homburg is almost
richer in such examples of dry observation and humorous and spirited episode.
 This may serve to exemplify the failures of
these painters of genre. Not light and colour,
but anecdote, comedy, and genial tale-telling
are the basis of their labours. And yet,
notwithstanding this attempt to express literary
ideas through the mediums of a totally different
art, their work is significant. While continental
artists avoided nothing so much as that which
might seem to approach nature, the English,
revolting from the thraldom of theory, gathered
subjects for their pictures from actual life.
These men, indeed, pointed out the way to
painters from every country; and they, once on
the right road, were bound ultimately to arrive
at the point from which they no longer looked
on life through the glasses of the anecdotist,
but saw it with the eye of the true artist.

MULREADY. CROSSING THE FORD.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE MILITARY PICTURE

While English painting from the days of Hogarth and Wilkie embraced rustic and middle-class life,
the victory of modernity on the Continent could only be accomplished slowly and by degrees. The
question of costume played an important part in it. “Artists love antiquated costume because, as they
say, it gives them greater sweep and freedom. But I should like to suggest that in historical
representations of their own age an eye should be kept on propriety of delineation rather than on
freedom and sweep. Otherwise one might just as well allow an historian to talk to us about phalanxes,
battlements, triarii, and argyraspids in place of battalions, squadrons, grenadiers, and cuirassiers. The
painters of the great events of the day ought, especially, to be more true to fact. In battle-pieces, for
example, they ought not to have cavalry shooting and sabreing about them in leather collars, in round
and plumed hats, and the vast jack-boots which exist no longer. The old masters drew, engraved, and
painted in this way because people really dressed in such a manner at the time. It is said that our
costume is not picturesque, and therefore why should we choose it? But posterity will be curious to
know how we clothed ourselves, and will wish to have no gap from the eighteenth century to its own
time.”

VERNET. THE WOUNDED ZOUAVE.

These words, which the well-known Vienna librarian Denis wrote in 1797 in his Lesefrüchte, show
how early came the problem which was at high-water mark for a generation afterwards. The painting of
the nineteenth century could only become modern when it succeeded in recognising and expressing the
characteristic side of modern costume. But to do that it took more than half a century. It was, after all,
natural that to people who had seen the graceful forms and delicate colours of the rococo time, the
garb of the first half of the century should seem the most unfortunate and the least enviable in the
whole history of costume. “What person of artistic education is not of the opinion,” runs a passage in
Putmann’s book on the Düsseldorf school in 1835,—“what person of artistic education is not of the
opinion that the dress of the present day is tasteless, hideous, and ape-like? Moreover, can a true style
be brought into harmony with hoop-petticoats and swallow-tail coats and such vagaries? In our time,
therefore, art is right in seeking out those beautiful fashions of the past, about which tailors concern
themselves so little. How much longer must we go about, unpicturesque beings, like ugly black bats, in
swallow-tail coats and wide trousers? The peasant’s blouse, indeed, can be accepted as one of the few
picturesque dresses which have yet been preserved in Germany from the inauspicious influence of the
times.” The same plaint is sung by Hotho in his history of German and Netherlandish painting; the
costume of his age he declares to be thoroughly prosaic and tiresome. It is revolting to painters and an
offence to the educated eye. Art must necessarily seek salvation in the past, unless it is to wait, and
give brush and palette a holiday, until that happy time when the costume of nations comes to its
pictorial regeneration. Only one zone, the realm of blouse and military uniform, was beyond the domain
of tail-coat and trousers, and still furnished art with rich material.

Gaz. des Beaux-Arts.

CHARLET. UN HOMME QUI BOÎT SEUL N’EST AUGUSTE MARIE RAFFET.
PAS DIGNE DE VIVRE.

Since it was by working on uniform that plastic artists first learnt how to treat contemporary costume,
so it was the military picture that first entered the circle of modern painting. By exalting the soldier into
a warrior, and the warrior into a hero, it was here possible, even in the times of David and Carstens, to
effect a certain compromise with the ruling classical ideas. Gérard, Girodet—to some extent even Gros—
made abundant use of the mask of the Greek or Roman warrior, with the object of admitting the battle-
piece into painting in the grand style. The real heroes of the Napoleonic epoch had not this plastic
appearance nor these epic attitudes. Classicism altered their physiognomies and gave them, most
illogically, the air of old marble statues. It was Horace Vernet who freed battle painting from this
anathema. This, but little else, stands to his credit.

Together with his son-in-law Paul Delaroche, Horace Vernet is the most genuine product of the Juste-
milieu period. The king with the umbrella founded the Museum of Versailles, that monstrous depôt of
daubed canvas, which is a horrifying memory to any one who has ever wandered through it. However, it
is devoted à toutes les gloires de la France. In a few years a suite of galleries, which it takes almost two
hours merely to pass through from end to end, was filled with pictures of all sizes, bringing home the
history of the country, from Charlemagne to the African expedition of Louis Philippe, under all
circumstances which are in any way flattering to French pride. For miles numberless manufacturers of
painting bluster from the walls. As pictor celerrimus Horace Vernet had the command-in-chief, and
became so famous by his chronicle of the conquest of Algiers that for a long time he was held by
trooper, Philistine, and all the kings and emperors of Europe as the greatest painter in France. He was
the last scion of a celebrated dynasty of artists, and had taken a brush in his hand from the moment he
threw away his child’s rattle. A good deal of talent had been given him in his cradle: sureness of eye,
lightness of hand, and an enviable memory. His vision was correct, if not profound; he painted his
pictures without hesitation, and is favourably distinguished from many of his contemporaries by his
independence: he owes no one anything, and reveals his own qualities without arraying himself in those
of other people. Only these qualities are not of an order which gives his pictures artistic interest. The
spark of Géricault’s genius, which seems to have been transmitted to him in the beginning, was
completely quenched in his later years. Having swiftly attained popularity by the aid of lithography
which circulated his “Mazeppa” through the whole world, he became afterwards a bad and vulgar
painter, without poetry, light, or colour; a reporter who expressed himself in banal prose and wounded
all the finer spirits of his age. “I loathe this man,” said Baudelaire, as early as 1846.

Devoid of any sense of the tragedy of war, which Gros possessed in such a high degree, Vernet
treated battles like performances at the circus. His pictures have movement without passion, and
magnitude without greatness. If it had been required of him, he would have daubed all the boulevards;
his picture of Smala is certainly not so long, but there would have been no serious difficulty in
lengthening it by half a mile. This incredible stenographical talent won for him his popularity. He was
decorated with all the orders in the world. The bourgeois felt happy when he looked at Vernet’s
pictures, and the paterfamilias promised to buy a horse for his little boy. The soldiers called him “mon
colonel,” and would not have been surprised if he had been made a Marshal of France. A lover of art
passes the pictures of Vernet with the sentiment which the old colonel owned to entertaining towards
music. “Are you fond of music, colonel?” asked a lady. “Madame, I am not afraid of it.”
 RAFFET. THE PARADE.

The trivial realism of his workmanship is as tedious as the unreal heroism of his soldiers. In the
manner in which he conceived the trooper, Vernet stands between the Classicists and the moderns. He
did not paint ancient warriors, but French soldiers: he knew them as a corporal knows his men, and by
this respect for prescribed regulation he was prevented from turning them into Romans. But though he
disregarded Classicism, in outward appearance, he did not drop the heroic tone. He always saw the
soldier as the bold defender of his country, the warrior performing daring deeds, as in the “Battle of
Alexander”; and in this way he gave his pictures their unpleasant air of bluster. For neither modern
tactics nor modern cannon admit of the prominence of the individual as it is to be seen in Vernet’s
pictures. The soldier of the nineteenth century is no longer a warrior, but the unit in a multitude; he
does what he is ordered, and for that he has no need of the spirit of an ancient hero; he kills or is killed,
without seeing his enemy or being seen himself. The course of a battle advances, move by move,
according to mathematical calculation. It is therefore false to represent soldiers in heroic attitudes, or
even to suggest deeds of heroism on the part of those in command. In giving his orders and directing a
battle a general has to behave pretty much as he does at home at his writing-table. And he is never in
the battle, as he is represented by Horace Vernet; on the contrary, he remains at a considerable
distance off. Therefore, even with the dimensions of which Vernet availed himself, the exact portrait of a
modern battle is exclusively an affair for panorama, but never for the flat surface of a picture. A picture
must confine itself, either to the field-marshal directing the battle from a distance upon a hill in the
midst of his staff, or else to little pictorial episodes in the individual life of the soldier. The gradual
development from unreal battle-pieces to simple episodic paintings can be followed step by step in the
following works.
 RAFFET. 1807.

What was painted for the Versailles Museum in connection with deeds of arms in the Crimean War
and the Italian campaign kept more or less to the blustering official style of Horace Vernet. In the
galleries of Versailles the battles of Wagram, Loano, and Altenkirche (1837-39), and an episode from
the retreat from Russia (1851), represent the work of Hippolyte Bellangé. These are huge lithochromes
which have been very carefully executed. Adolphe Yvon, who is responsible for “The Taking of Malakoff,”
“The Battle of Magenta,” and “The Battle of Solferino,” is a more tedious painter, and remained during
his whole life a pupil of Delaroche; he laid chief stress on finished and rounded composition, and gave
his soldiers no more appearance of life than could be forced into the accepted academic convention.
The fame of Isidor Pils, who immortalised the disembarkation of the French troops in the Crimea, the
battle of Alma, and the reception of Arab chiefs by Napoleon III, has paled with equal rapidity. He could
paint soldiers, but not battles, and, like Yvon, he was too precise in the composition of his works. In
consequence they have as laboured an effect in arrangement as they have in colour. He was completely
wanting in sureness and spontaneity. It is only his water-colours that hold one’s attention; and this they
do at any rate by their unaffected actuality, and in spite of their dull and heavy colour. Alexandre Protais
verged more on the sentimental. He loved soldiers, and therefore had the less toleration for war, which
swept the handsome young fellows away. Two pendants, “The Morning before the Attack” and “The
Evening after the Battle,” founded his reputation in 1863. The first showed a group of riflemen waiting
in excitement for the first bullets of the enemy; the second represented the same men in the evening
delighted with their victory, but at the same time—and here you have the note of Protais—mournful
over the loss of their comrades. “The Prisoners” and “The Parting” of 1872 owed their success to the
same lachrymose and melodramatic sensibility.
 Cassell & Co.
RAFFET. POLISH INFANTRY.

RAFFET. THE MIDNIGHT REVIEW.

C’est la grande revue A l’heure de minuit

Qu’aux Champs-Elysées Tient César décédé.
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookname.com