QUALITY OLD RECIPE. 341 



where fine ales have immemorially been brewed, and 

 where may be also found the ales of every brewing 

 district of the country. 



Act of Parliament, or TABLE ALE, with intermedi- 

 ate beer, have lately come into vogue, but they all 

 give place, in public estimation and consumption, to 

 porter. This favourite beverage, however, is con- 

 demned by the physicians, as productive of bilious 

 and liver complaints, and injurious to the female com- 

 plexion. Porter is a compound drink, in which, 

 indeed, brown or high-dried malt was formerly the 

 principal ingredient, but in aid of which, certain other 

 ingredients far less costly, but not absolutely noxious, 

 seem, in these days, to be deemed allowable, or rather 

 essential, in the manufacture of this cerevisia sui gene- 

 ris, or peculiar beer. It is said to have been, for 

 some years, brewed chiefly from pale malt, the colour 

 being imparted by a certain quantity of "patent 

 malt," roasted like coffee, until black. Brewing beer 

 from barley, or other raw unmalted grain, ground to 

 meal, and infused for two or three hours in the liquor 

 at a heat of about 150 degrees, is said to be in prac- 

 tice. I should apprehend that good keeping beer 

 cannot be so produced. Other ingredients, which 

 have been too often used, are proscribed by law, 

 under very heavy penalties. 



It is curious to read in the treatise by Ellis of 

 Gaddesden, the recipe for brewing porter. He tells 

 us, the brewers in his time commonly drew a barrel 

 and a firkin, or a hogshead of porter from a quarter 

 of brown malt; which porter they sold for twenty- 

 three shillings per barrel. From my own personal 

 Q 3 



