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Malts are dryed with several sorts of Fuel; as the Coak, Welch-coal, Straw, Wood and Fern, &c.
Pale and amber Malts dryed with Coak or Culm, obtains a more clean bright pale Colour than if dryed with any other Fuel, because there is not smoak to darken and sully their Skins or Husks, and give them an ill relish, that those Malts little or more have, which are dryed with Straw, Wood, or Fern, &c.
Next to the Coak-dryed Malt, the Straw-dryed is the sweetest and best tasted: This I must own is sometimes well Malted where the Barley, Wheat, Straw, Conveniencies and the Maker's Skill are good; but as the fire of the Straw is not so regular as the Coak, the Malt is attended with more uncertainty in its making, because it is difficult to keep it to a moderate and equal Heat, and also exposes the Malt in some degree to the taste of the smoak.
The Coak or Welch Coal also makes more true and compleat Malt, as I have before hinted, than any other Fuel, because its fire gives both a gentle and certain Heat, whereby the Corns are in all their Parts gradually dryed, and therefore of late these Malts have gained such a Reputation that great quantities have been consumed in most Parts of the Nation for their wholsome Natures and sweet fine Taste: These make such fine Ales and But-beers, as has tempted several of our Malsters in my Neighbour-hood to burn Coak or Culm at a great expence of Carriage thirty Miles from London.
But the Coak is reckoned by most to exceed all others for making Drink of the finest Flavour and pale Colour, because it sends no smoak forth to hurt the Malt with any offensive tang, that Wood, Fern and Straw are apt to do in a lesser or greater degree; but there is a difference even in what is call'd Coak, the right sort being large Pit- coal chark'd or burnt in some measure to a Cinder, till all the Sulphur is consumed and evaporated away, which is called Coak, and this when it is truly made is the best of all other Fuels; but if there is but one Cinder as big as an Egg, that is not thoroughly cured, the smoak of this one is capable of doing a little damage, and this happens too often by the negligence or avarice of the Coak-maker: There is another sort by some wrongly called Coak, and rightly named Culme or Welch-coal, from Swanzey in Pembrokeshire, being of a hard stony substance in small bits resembling a shining Coal, and will burn without smoak, and by its sulphureous effluvia cast a most excellent whiteness on all the outward parts of the grainy body: In Devonshire I have seen their Marble or grey Fire-stone burnt into Lime with the strong fire that this Culme makes, and both this and the Chark'd Pit-coal affords a most sweet moderate and certain fire to all Malt that is dryed by it.
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