The consumption of French Brandy was very great, and discontent was excited from the notion that the country was suffering from the lack of encouragement to home distillation; permission was accordingly granted to a company to distil brandy from wine and malt.
Besides wine and brandy, ale was drunk in various forms.
Chamberlayne states that in 1667 no less than 1,522,781 barrels of beer were brewed in the city of London, each of them containing from 32 to 36 gallons, and that the amount yearly brewed in London had since risen to nearly 2,000,000 barrels; and that the excise for London was farmed out for 120,000l. a year.[159]
Jorevin de Rochefort, whose travels were published at Paris in 1672, says:—‘The English beer is the best in Europe’ (Antiquarian Repertory, vol. iv. p. 607). At Cambridge he had a visit from the clergyman, ‘during which,’ says he, ‘it was necessary to drink two or three pots of beer during our parley; for no kind of business is transacted in England without the intervention of pots of beer.’
At this time people frequently ate no supper but took buttered ale, composed of sugar, cinnamon, butter, and beer brewed without hops. It was put into a cup, set before the fire to heat, and drunk hot.
Cider was again coming into fashion. Butler (Hudibras) tells of Sidrophel that he knew—
... in what sign best sider’s made.
The manufacture being of sufficient moment for reference to astrology.
A new liquor now introduced from Brunswick was a sort of strong beer called Mum, or, sometimes, Brunswick Mum. The word has been derived from mummeln, to mumble, or from the onomatopœic mum, denoting silence, and from Christian Mummer by whom it was first brewed. It was brewed chiefly from malt made from wheat instead of barley. Pope writes of it:—