50. As to the length of time that you are to keep the beer before you begin to use it, that must, in some measure, depend on taste. _Such beer_ as this _ale_ will keep almost any length of time. As to the mode of _tapping_, that is as easy almost as _drinking_. When the cask is _empty_, great care must be taken to cork it _tightly up_, so that no air get in; for, if it do, the cask is _moulded_, and when once moulded, it is _spoiled for ever_. It is never again fit to be used about beer. Before the cask be used again, the grounds must be poured out, and the cask cleaned by several times scalding; by putting in _stones_ (or a _chain_,) and rolling and shaking about till it be quite clean. Here again the round casks have the decided advantage; it being almost impossible to make the bell-casks thoroughly clean, without _taking the head out_, which is both troublesome and expensive; as it cannot be well done by any one but a _cooper_, who is not always at hand, and who, when he is, must be _paid_.
51. I have now done with the _ale_, and it remains for me to speak of the _small beer_. In Paragraph 47 (which now see) I left you drawing off the _ale-wort_, and with your copper full of boiling water. Thirty-six gallons of that boiling water are, as soon as you have got your ale-wort out, and have put down your mash-tub stick to close up the hole at the bottom; as soon as you have done this, thirty-six gallons of the boiling water are to go into the mashing-tub; the grains are to be well stirred up, as before; the mashing-tub is to be covered over again, as mentioned in Paragraph 43; and the mash is to stand in that state for _an hour_, and not two hours, as for the ale-wort.
52. When the small beer mash has stood its hour, draw it off as in Paragraph 47, and put it into the tun-tub as you did the ale-wort.
53. By this time your copper will be _empty_ again, by putting your ale-liquor to cool, as mentioned in Paragraph 47. And you now put the small beer wort _into the copper_, with the hops that you used before, and with _half a pound of fresh hops_ added to them; and this liquor you boil briskly for _an hour_.
54. By this time you will have taken the grains and the sediment clean out of the mashing-tub, and taken out the bunch of birch twigs, and made all clean. Now put in the birch twigs again, and put down your stick as before. Lay your two or three sticks across the mashing-tub, put your basket on them, and take your liquor from the copper (putting the fire out first) and pour it into the mashing-tub through the basket. Take the basket away, throw the hops to the dunghill, and leave the small beer liquid _to cool in the mashing-tub_.