From two to six pounds of treacle used to one butt of beer, has a very powerful effect, not only to give a sweet fulness in the mouth, but to remove the acidity of the drink. Treacle is the refused sweet of the sugar baker, part of the large quantities of lime used in refining sugars, undoubtedly enter in its composition, and is the occasion of its softening beers.
In proportion as beers are more or less forward, from two to four ounces of salt of wormwood and salt of tartar, together with one ounce of pounded ginger, are successfully employed. All these substances absorb acids, but they leave a flatness in the liquor, which in some measure is removed by the use of ginger.
Sometimes, in summer, when beer is wanted for use, we find it on the fret; as it is then in a repelling state, it does not give way to the finings, so as to precipitate. For this, about two ounces of cream of tartar are mixed with the isinglass, and if not sufficient, four ounces of oil of vitriol are added to the finings next used, in order to quiet the drink.
Some coopers attempt to extend their art so far as to add strength to malt liquors; but let it be remembered, that the principal constituent parts of beer should be malt and hops. When strength is given to the liquor by any other means, its nature is altered, and then it is not beer we drink. Treacle in large quantities, the berries of the Cocculus Indicus, the grains of paradise, or the Indian ginger pounded fine, and mixed with a precipitating substance, are said to produce this extraordinary strength. It would be well if the attempts made to render beers strong by other means than by hops and malt, were to be imputed to none but coopers; Cocculus Indicus, and such like ingredients, have been known to be boiled in worts, by brewers who were more ambitious to excel the rest of the trade, than to do justice to the consumers. Were it not that pointing out vice is often the means to forward the practice of it, I could add to this infamous catalogue, more ingredients, it were to be wished practitioners never knew either the name or nature of, for fining, softening, and strengthening.
Formerly brown beers were required to be of a very dark brown, inclinable to black. As this color could not be procured by malt properly dried, the juice of elder berries was frequently mixed with the isinglass. This juice afterwards gave way to calcined sugar; both are needless, as time and knowledge remove our prejudices, when the malt and hops have been properly chosen; and applied to their intended purpose.
Such are the remedies chiefly made use of for brown beers. Drinks formed from pale malts are always supposed to become spontaneously fine, and when they are so, by being bottled, they are saved from any farther hazard. As it is impossible for any fermented liquor to be absolutely at rest, the reason of beers being preserved by this method, is, thereby they are deprived of a communication with the air, and, without risk, gain all the advantages which age, by slow degrees, procures, and which art can never imitate. Were we as curious in our ales and beers as we are in the liquors we import, did we give to the produce of our own country the same care and attendance which we bestow on foreign wines, we might enjoy them in a perfection at present scarcely known, and perhaps cause foreigners to give to our beers a preference to their own growth.
SECTION XX.
OF TASTE[41].
Doctor Grew, who has treated of this matter, divides taste into simple and compound; he mentions the different species of the first, and calculates the various combinations of the latter, the number of which exceeds what at first might be expected. Without entering into this detail, I think that the different tastes residing in the barleys, or formed by their being malted, and brewed with hops, may be reduced to the following; the acid, which is a simple taste; the sweet, which is an acid smoothed with oils; the aromatic, which is the compound of a spiritous acid, and a volatile sulphur; the bitter, which, according to our author, is produced by an oil well impregnated either with an alkaline or an acid salt, shackled with earth; the austere, which is both astringent and bitter; and, lastly, the nauseous and rank, which is, at least in part, sometimes found in beers, which have either been greatly affected by fire, or, by long age, have lost their volatile sulphurs; and have nothing left but the thicker and coarser oils, resembling the empyreumatic dregs of distilled liquors not carefully drawn.