NATURE 
[April 7, 1870 
OUR NATIONAL DRINK 
Strong Drink and Tobacco Smoke: the Structure, 
Growth, and Uses of Malt, Hops, Veast, and Tobacco. 
With 167 original illustrations, drawn and engraved 
on steel by Henry P. Prescott, F.L.S. Pp. 71. (Lon- 
don: Macmillan and Co. 1869.) 
Burton-on-Trent: its History, tts Waters, and its 
Breweries. By William Molyneux, F.G.S. Pp. 264. 
(London: Triibner and Co. Burton-on-Trent : 
Whitechurch.) 
V HEN Mr. Gladstone, some years ago, inaugurated 
a new era, and opened British ports to wine which 
could not be brought here previously on account of 
its value being actually less than the duty it was sub- 
ject to equally with wine of the most costly sort, it was 
believed by many that a serious blow had been dealt 
against a branch of home industry—the production of 
malt liquor —which is probably more peculiar to this 
country than any other. 
The fact that there has always been a host of poetic 
and jubilant notions associated with the name of wine, as 
well as the enhanced estimation of a thing not easily 
obtainable, may have seemed good reasons for antici- 
pating a very general desertion of beer in favour of cheap 
wine; but when the inaccessibility which lent enchant- 
ment to the name of wine was replaced by the sour reality 
of shilling hock or claret, the halo of imaginative recom- 
mendation was soon dispelled; consequently, these beve- 
rages have been very generally classed among things to 
be avoided, and even “ Gladstone” sherry is regarded with 
profound suspicion, Meanwhile, our national drink has 
maintained its supremacy, and though its prospects were 
for a time clouded by the advent of cheap wine, it may 
safely be said that while the beer-drinking class in this 
country is quite as large as ever, the amount of malt 
liquor consumed has scarcely been affected by the intro- 
duction of cheap wine. 
One of the works referred to at the head of this article 
gives some account of the materials used in the produc- 
tion of beer, and of the operations they are submitted 
to; the other contains a history of a town which is now 
famous as one of the chief seats of the brewing trade, 
together with an account of the topography and geological 
features of the neighbourhood. There is also a good 
description of the breweries, and of the enormous extent 
to which the industry has grown, with much interesting 
information as to its origin and development. 
The beer-consuming propensity of the Briton is not a 
characteristic exclusively his own. The Germans, Rus- 
sians, and Belgians, have long been famous for their 
cerevisial devotion, and even the Frenchman is rapidly 
acquiring a taste for beer which demands satisfaction in 
spite of national tradition and fiscal regulations. At the 
same time, though the general excellence of British beer 
has so long been notorious throughout Europe, and the 
later fame of bitter beer has now become familiar in all 
parts of the world, it is not without a rival in the beer of 
Bavaria and Austria; and, while the stupendous propor- 
tions of British breweries as well as our vast trade in 
beer may have hitherto justified the belief that this 
country was without a competitor in the art of brewing, 
the rapid development of this branch of industry in Ger- 
many and Austria within the last few years is well 
calculated to suggest the question whether we may not 
before long find that in this art, as in most others, we no 
longer occupy a position of secure pre-eminence, but have 
to contend with other nations for a place in the markets 
of the world, if not in that of our own country. 
The beer of Austria is already imported here and sold 
in London, It is largely consumed in Paris, where it 
excited quite a f/wvore during the Exhibition of 1865. 
Moreover, the Austrian breweries, though of comparatively 
recent origin, are on a scale approaching that of our 
own great beer-producing establishments. Down the 
whole length of the Lower Danube, beer-brewing has 
become a settled and lucrative business. On the shores 
of the Black Sea and even in Constantinople this is also 
the case. Almost every town of any importance has its 
brewery, or several of them, where excellent beer is made. 
The proximity of these countries to grain-producing dis- 
tricts, as well as the extension of agriculture in the plains 
of Hungary and elsewhere, are all circumstances in favour 
of the development of this industry, and the opening of a 
means of transport to Indja and China by the Suez Canal 
may well afford an opportunity for future competition with 
this country in the supply of beer to those large markets 
which it has hitherto been our exclusive privilege to pro- 
vide with beer. 
Here, then, is a possibility of British beer finding a rival 
much more formidable than cheap wine is at home, and 
in this view of the subject it may be interesting to the 
readers of NATURE to know something more of the pecu- 
liarities of German beer. With the exception of Belgium, 
where inferior kinds of beer have long been made, the chief 
seat of beer production, until within the last few years, was 
Bavaria, and the beer made there was celebrated through- 
out the Continent. This beer is made by a method diffe- 
rent from that practised in this country, and the difference 
consists chiefly in conducting the fermentation at a very 
low temperature. Under this condition the yeast that is 
produced does not collect as a scum at the surface of the 
fermenting wort, as is the case in our system of brewing ; 
but it separates as small clots or flocculi, which fall to the 
bottom of the liquor, leaving the surface freely exposed to 
the atmosphere. The beer brewed in this way is less 
liable to become sour when kept than beer brewed by the 
method of frothing fermentation, and this is one of the 
special characteristics of Bavarian beer. Liebig, who has 
devoted much attention to the subject, explains this dif. 
ference as resulting from the facility afforded by sedi- 
mentary fermentation for atmospheric oxidation of the 
soluble gluten, or that constituent of beer wort from 
which yeast is produced by oxidation. In frothing fer- 
mentation this action of the atmosphere is prevented by 
the layer of yeast collecting at the surface of the liquor. 
The formation of yeast then takes place by abstraction of 
oxygen from sugar, and consequently, since beer wort 
contains more soluble gluten than is requisite for convert- 
ing the sugar into alcohol, the proportion of sugar to 
gluten is still further reduced in that way ; so that after 
fermentation has ceased, some of the gluten still remains 
unaltered in the beer, and, by a subsequent slow fermen- 
tation, is capable of determining the conversion of alcohol 
into acetic acid. In sedimentary fermentation, on the 
contrary, the unimpeded action of atmospheric air has the 
effect of separating the whole of the gluten from the wort 
