A 
| which characterized porter. 
110 
perature, and had in consequence acquired a 
brown colour. This incipient charring had de- 
veloped a peculiar and agreeable bitter taste, 
which was communicated to the beer along with 
the dark colour. This bitter taste rendered beer 
more agreeable to the palate, and less injurious 
to the constitution than ale. It was manufac- 
tured in large quantities, and soon became the 
common drink of the lower.ranks in England. 
When, during the wars of the French revolution, 
the price of malt was very materially increased, 
the brewers found out that a greater quantity of 
| wort of a given strength could be procured from 
pale malt than from brown malt ; the consequence 
was, that pale malt was, to a considerable extent, 
| substituted for brown malt in the brewing of 
porter and beer. The wort now, however, was 
paler, and wanted that agreeable bitter flavour 
The porter brewers 
endeavoured to remedy these defects by several 
artificial additions, such as burnt sugar, quassia, 
&c., and most of which the chief London porter 
brewers, I believe, long since discontinued.” 
The adulteration of ale and of all other malt 
liquors—contrary to Dr. Thomson’s charitable 
supposition—continues to, be practised in a most 
flagitious manner and to an almost incredible 
extent. In Scotland, genuine malt liquor, espe- 
cially of the common or “small” kinds, is with 
difficulty obtained ; and even in England, in spite 
| of its general use and of the extensive practice 
_ of home-brewing, is very far from being general. 
| “The statute,” says Mr. Accum, “prohibits the 
brewer from using any ingredients in his brew- 
ings, except malt and hops; but it too often hap- 
pens that those who suppose they are drinking a 
| nutritious beverage, made of these ingredients 
only, are entirely deceived. The beverage may, 
in fact, be neither more nor less than a compound 
of the most deleterious substances ; and it is also 
clear that all ranks of society are alike exposed 
to the nefarious fraud.” Mr. Child, in his very 
| widely circulated treatise on the brewing of por- 
ter, says that, however disagreeable or pernicious 
the ingredients used in adulterating malt liquor 
_ May appear, they seem to be indispensable for 
producing such taste, flavour, and body of beer 
as will secure the public favour. Some of the 
usual adulterating substances which have been 
the subjects of frequent detection and public 
punishment at the breweries, are of a harmless 
nature upon health, and deceive only the eye and 
the purse; but others are either powerful drugs 
or downright poisons, and cannot be employed 
by the brewer without enormous guilt in the 
sight of God, or consumed by the purchaser with- 
out certain damage to his health. Some of the 
most common of these substances are molasses, 
honey, burnt sugar, ginger, carraway-seed, cori- 
ander-seed, orange peel, gentian root, quassia, 
| capsicum, grains of paradise, wormwood, liquorice 
juice, cocculus indicus, salt, alum, copperas, harts- 
horn shavings, mixed drugs, extract of cocculus 
ALE. 
indicus, extract of poppies, tobacco, nux vomica, 
opium, and vitriol. Appalling as is this list of 
abominations and poisons, in too many instances 
swallowed by the drinkers of ale and porter, it 
would be incomplete without a statement of the 
proportion of alcohol contained in the various kinds 
of genuine malt liquor. Mr. Accum furnishes 
us with such a statement, partly on the author- 
ity of his own analyses, and partly on that of the 
analyses of Professor Brande; and he must be 
understood as giving the proportion not of proof 
spirit, but of rectified alcohol,—a substance which 
we saw in a former article to be about double 
the strength of ordinary brandy, whisky, or rum. 
According to this statement, home-brewed ale | 
contains 83 per cent. of alcohol, Burton ale from 
6:25 to 8°88 per cent., Edinburgh ale 6:2 per cent., 
Dorchester ale 5°5 per cent., common London- 
brewed ale 5°82 per cent., Scotch ale 5°75 per 
cent., London porter from 4: to 4°75 per cent., 
Brown stout from 5: to 6°80 per cent., and Small 
beer from 0°75 to 1:28 per cent. 
The preparing of malt forms in this country a 
special avocation, and the cultivating of hops is 
confined by climate to the warm counties of the 
south of England and Ireland; yet both may, in 
certain circumstances, be conducted on a small 
scale by either the farmer or the cottager. The 
quantity of good beer assigned by Cobbett as 
sufficient for a labourer’s family during the year 
is 274 gallons; this quantity of beer is produced 
from about 15} bushels of malt, or about 122 
bushels of barley; and this quantity of barley 
may, in an average crop, be obtained from about 
three-fifths of a rood of ground. The barley for 
any one brewing, in order to be malted, may be 
put into a bag, and steeped for an hour in a tub 
of water; then taken out, laid in a heap on the 
floor of a warm room or corner, and covered with 
straw or with two or three bags to raise a moist | 
heat and produce vegetation; and finally, when ° 
the growth from each grain is three-fourths of an 
inch in length, spread out to be dried either in an 
oven, or on a heating flue, or on the hottest part 
of the flued floor. Home-made malt, however, is 
sometimes manufactured in the easier method of 
grinding or bruising the fresh barley, mixing it 
with a small quantity of ground malt, and plac- 
ing it for two or three hours in mash at a heat 
of about 150°. But the ale produced by malt 
manufactured in this manner is said to be strong 
and flat, to have a bad taste, to lie heavily on the 
stomach, and to be decidedly unwholesome. Seeds 
not fully ripe are usually found to vegetate sooner 
and more strongly than seeds which have been 
fully ripened ; so that barley intended for malting 
ought to be cut down a few days earlier than 
barley for the pot. Wheat, barley, or other grain, 
when sprouted in the ear in consequence of wet 
weather, is very generally, on English farms, 
taken home, dried, and used as malt; and the 
seeds of ryegrass, when sprouted, might probably 
be very effectively used in the same manner. 
PERN sa Ae wate ot a | 
