Cleansing vessels.

Something that annoys me - among many, many other things -  is when Burton unions are described as fermenting vessels. They aren't. They're cleansing vessels. The fermentation started in rounds or squares and the wort was only later moved to the unions to, primarily, remove excess yeast.

It wasn't the only system or cleansing. Pontoes were an older system, with unions really being a more sophisticated and automated, development of it.

Cleansing vessels.
Where the fermentation was completed and excess yeast removed. There were three types of cleansing vessels: pontoes, unions and settling tanks or squares. Pontoes were single barrels, placed on stillions into which yeast was expelled through the bung hole. The casks were kept full by refilling, by hand, with wort which had been expelled with the yeast. Unions were similar, but a series of casks were connected together in a "union", pipes being so arranged as to automatically return expelled beer to the casks without the need for manual refilling. 

Watney's pontoes in 1902

Settling tanks were quite different. They were shallow tanks, placed beneath the gyle tuns into which the wort was dropped after between 12 and 24 hours. Rather than being expelled from a barrel by the action of fermentation, yeast was removed by a combination of skimming the head and allowing it to settle to the bottom. It was also known as the "skimming system" for this reason. It was also known as the dropping system. It was used by some of the large London breweries. Fullers used this method until the 1970's. Brakspear's beers were fermented this way until quite recently. Fitted with attemperators, when the final gravity had been reached, the beer was slowly cooled over a few days to a temperature of around 60º F before racking.

"Unions are noted for the clean tasted beers they give; pontoes are most fitted for porter and stouts, while a skimming system is specially adapted for stock beers."
"The Art of Brewing" by Frank Faulkner, 1876, page 139.

Quite impressive that Watney ponto room I wonder when the last ponto system was removed?

The above couple of paragraphs come from one o my many unpublished manuscripts. Namely. "Beer, Ale and Malt Liquor". A history of UK brewing from 1700 to 1973.

There's a funny story about how I wrote it. In the second half of my programming career, I had several contracts where I had little to no work. At one*, there wasn't even internet. Out of sheer boredom, I loaded pdfs of old brewing manuals onto a memory stick and took it into work. Where I spent the day trawling through them and knocking up text/notes for my mega book.

I've used bits of it over the years. For reference. Or for low-effort blog posts, like this one If all has gone well, I'll be in Montevideo with the kids 

Note sure where I'm going with this. Hi from Uruguay. (Where, unless I die in Brazil or Chile, that where's I'll be when this is published.)

 

 

* We had so little work, that when something came in half a dozen of us would huddle around the terminal watching the lucky chap who got to start the job. For 8 hours, 59 minutes each day, I had nothing work-related to do.

Best thing was, every Friday, someone went to a fish shop and got, er, fish for the office. Broodje kibbeling (fried fish nuggets in a bun) was always my order. So much so, I continued the tradition for 10 years in my next, and last, job.