382 QUALITY COMPARISON WITH ALES DRUGS. 



LONDON PORTER. I have brewed beer, and ales, 

 under various other names, but never porter. Now, 

 as this beer is so universal a favourite, it may as well 

 be brewed in a private as in a public brewhouse ; and ( 

 as many cannot dispense with it at their meals, they 

 may perhaps be induced to try whether they cannot, 

 as well as a much cheaper, brew an equally genuine 

 and good porter at home. I have already made the 

 necessary distinction between the absolutely noxious 

 ingredients used in brewing porter, the use of which 

 cannot be denied, since they have, in a multitude of 

 instances, been detected and fined, and those which 

 are necessary, at the same time not actually noxious. 

 They are, indeed, chiefly diuretic, and some of them 

 nourishing and promotive of accretion, as the black 

 malts (treacle), and liquorice root. Nevertheless, 

 porter can never be equally nourishing and salubrious 

 with beer, which is the genuine and simple product 

 of malt and hops. 



But porter is more salubrious and less hurtful than 

 either the town or country ales of the brewer, since 

 the ingredients in the composition of porter are sel- 

 dom, if ever, so noxious as those used in ales, which 

 are scarcely ever brewed without the addition of 

 coculus Indicus, or grains of paradise, or both. The 

 former is a most deleterious drug a poison, of which 

 from long experience, I can instantly detect the 

 flavour in beer ; the latter are heating and unwhole- 

 some, I remember in former days an ale-brewer, 

 who, in his first essay with the Indian berry, was so 

 liberal with the quantity used, that he did not dare 

 to send it among his customers, but found one in a 



