BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. of 
of wort in Johnson’s dictionary is ‘‘ new beer, either unfermented 
or in the act of fermentation. Bacon.” The confusion due to 
this lack of definite description is similar to what might occur 
to-day in case an author in discussing cider should fail to specify 
whether he meant sweet cider or hard cider. 
A writer in the journal ‘‘ Every Saturday,” * regards it as 
‘¢probable that the ale of our early ancestors — at least the great 
bulk of it — was intended to be drunk sweet and new.” Another 
writer assures us that ale, the favorite drink of our Saxon fore- 
fathers, was a thick, sweet, unhopped liquor; and there is no lack 
of testimony to the effect that a distinction was made originally 
in England between ale, which was a liquor brewed from malt, to 
be drunk fresh, and beer, a liquor brewed from malt and hops, 
intended to keep.{ New ale and wort were often, or even usually, 
regarded as synonymous terms. The use of hops appears to have 
been not wholly unknown in England as early as 1440, though it 
was a century later that they came into general use. 
It is perhaps not wholly impossible that a beverage known as 
Stepony, Stipony, or Stipone, that was procurable in England in 
the seventeenth century, may have been an unfermented sweet 
wort, though there seems to be no proof of this idea, and the 
descriptions of the substance itself are meagre and various. It is 
spoken of sometimes as ‘‘a kind of ale,” and at other times as 
‘not really ale,” but ‘‘a sort of sweet liquor”... ‘‘ drunk in 
some places in London in summer time.” § Mr. T. H. B. Graham, 
writing in the Gentleman’s Magazine || on ‘‘ The Malt Liquors of 
the Ancients” and ‘‘ The Malt Liquors of the English,” has given 
numerous references, some of which manifestly apply to the use 
of sweet wort rather than to beer proper. 
Paulus, { in a letter from Egypt, written in 1716, tells of a prepa- 
ration of concentrated wort as eaten in that country: ‘‘ Wheat, 
* London, 1866, 1. 409. 
+ Notes and Queries, London, 1860, (2.) 10. 338. 
t See, for example, Notes and Queries, 1860, (2.) 10, 334. 
§ For some of the statements and opinions concerning Stepony that have 
been made at various times see Notes and Queries, London, 1880, (6.) 2. 
308, 334, 523; 1881, (G.) 3. 97, 130; 1881, (6.) 4. 155, 457. 
|| London, 1892 (N. 8S.) 48. 415 and 49. 52. 
q{ In the fifth volume of his Reisen im Oriente, as cited by J. C. Leuchs 
in his Die Zuker-Fabrikation, Niirnberg, 1835, page 31. 
