Age of Invention: Just Kiln Time

You’re reading Age of Invention, my newsletter on the causes of the British Industrial Revolution and the history of innovation, which goes out to over 40,000 people. To stay tuned and support the project, subscribe here: I had a great question in response to the last post on how coal usage first expanded in late-sixteenth-century England. If London’s brewers had made the switch to burning coal in the 1580s, heating up water via the walls of the flue, and so preventing the brew being tainted by coal’s sulphurous fumes — a technique known as the holzer-sparungs kunst, or wood-saving art — how did this fit with another popular story, of how pale ales had arisen from brewers switching to coal much later, in the 1640s? The answer is to do with how the heat was being used, involving two very different processes. The process in the 1580s was about using coal in the brewing itself, to boil the water ready for the malt to be mixed in. What changed in the 1640s, however, was not to do with brew

You’re reading Age of Invention, my newsletter on the causes of the British Industrial Revolution and the history of innovation, which goes out to over 40,000 people. To stay tuned and support the project, subscribe here: I had a great question in response to the last post on how coal usage first expanded in late-sixteenth-century England. If London’s brewers had made the switch to burning coal in the 1580s, heating up water via the walls of the flue, and so preventing the brew being tainted by coal’s sulphurous fumes — a technique known as the holzer-sparungs kunst, or wood-saving art — how d