J. Moss, for selling Spanish liquorice to a brewer.
Alex. Braden, for selling liquorice, 20_l._
J. Draper, for selling molasses to a brewer, 20_l._
The method of brewing porter has not been the same at all times as it is at present.
At first, the only essential difference in the methods of brewing this liquor and that of other kinds of beer, was, that porter was brewed from brown malt only; and this gave to it both the colour and flavour required. Of late years it has been brewed from mixtures of pale and brown malt.
These, at some establishments, are mashed separately, and the worts from each are afterwards mixed together. The proportion of pale and brown malt, used for brewing porter, varies in different breweries; some employ nearly two parts of pale malt and one part of brown malt; but each brewer appears to have his own proportion; which the intelligent manufacturer varies, according to the nature and qualities of the malt. Three pounds of hops are, upon an average, allowed to every barrel, (thirty-six gallons) of porter.
When the price of malt, on account of the great increase in the price of barley during the late war, was very high, the London brewers discovered that a larger quantity of wort of a given strength could be obtained from pale malt than from brown malt. They therefore increased the quantity of the former and diminished that of the latter. This produced beer of a paler colour, and of a less bitter flavour. To remedy these disadvantages, they invented an artificial colouring substance, prepared by boiling brown sugar till it acquired a very dark brown colour; a solution of which was employed to darken the colour of the beer. Some brewers made use of the infusion of malt instead of sugar colouring. To impart to the beer a bitter taste, the fraudulent brewer employed quassia wood and wormwood as a substitute for hops.
But as the colouring of beer by means of sugar became in many instances a pretext for using illegal ingredients, the Legislature, apprehensive from the mischief that might, and actually did, result from it, passed an Act prohibiting the use of burnt sugar, in July 1817; and nothing but malt and hops is now allowed to enter into the composition of beer: even the use of isinglass for clarifying beer, is contrary to law.