BREWING BEER.
108. This matter has been fully treated of in the two last numbers. But several correspondents wishing to fall upon some means of rendering the practice beneficial to those who are unable to purchase brewing utensils, have recommended the lending of them, or letting out, round a neighbourhood. Another correspondent has, therefore, pointed out to me an Act of Parliament which touches upon this subject; and, indeed, what of Excise Laws and Custom Laws and Combination Laws and Libel Laws, a human being in this country scarcely knows what he dares do or what he dares say. What father, for instance, would have imagined, that, having brewing utensils, which two men carry from house to house as easily as they can a basket, he dared not lend them to his son, living in the next street, or at the next door? Yet such really is the law; for, according to the Act 5th of the 22 and 23 of that honest and sincere gentleman Charles II., there is a penalty of 50l. for lending or letting brewing utensils. However, it has this limit; that the penalty is confined to Cities, Corporate Towns, and Market Towns, where there is a public Brewhouse. So that, in the first place, you may let, or lend, in any place where there is no public brewhouse; and in all towns not corporate or market, and in all villages, hamlets, and scattered places.
109. Another thing is, can a man who has brewed beer at his own house in the country, bring that beer into town to his own house, and for the use of his family there? This has been asked of me. I cannot give a positive answer without reading about seven large volumes in quarto of taxing laws. The best way would be to try it; and, if any penalty, pay it by subscription, if that would not come under the law of conspiracy! However, I think, there can be no danger here. So monstrous a thing as this can, surely, not exist. If there be such a law, it is daily violated; for nothing is more common than for country gentlemen, who have a dislike to die by poison, bringing their home-brewed beer to London.
110. Another correspondent recommends parishes to make their own malt. But, surely, the landlords mean to get rid of the malt and salt tax! Many dairies, I dare say, pay 50l. a year each in salt tax. How, then, are they to contend against Irish butter and Dutch butter and cheese? And as to the malt tax, it is a dreadful drain from the land. I have heard of labourers, living “in unkent places,” making their own malt, even now! Nothing is so easy as to make your own malt, if you were permitted. You soak the barley about three days (according to the state of the weather.) and then you put it upon stones or bricks and keep it turned, till the root shoots out; and then to know when to stop, and to put it to dry, take up a corn (which you will find nearly transparent) and look through the skin of it. You will see the spear, that is to say, the shoot that would come out of the ground, pushing on towards the point of the barley-corn. It starts from the bottom, where the root comes out; and it goes on towards the other end; and would, if kept moist, come out at that other end when the root was about an inch long. So that, when you have got the root to start, by soaking and turning in heap, the spear is on its way. If you look in through the skin, you will see it; and now observe; when the point of the spear has got along as far as the middle of the barley-corn, you should take your barley and dry it. How easy would every family, and especially every farmer, do this, if it were not for the punishment attached to it! The persons in the “unkent places” before mentioned, dry the malt in their oven! But let us hope that the labourer will soon be able to get malt without exposing himself to punishment as a violater of the law.