Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1885 — Beer. [ARTICLE]

Beer.

As for malt liquors: Excellent ale, pure and healthful, is imported from England and Scotland, and some very good beer from continental Europe. Of American ale, some is good and much—especially of the brands that have built up saloon reputation—is bad. American beer, particularly that made in and near New Y’ork, must be viewed with grave suspicion. The business of manufacturing it has grown in a short time to vast proportions, and tempting many to engage in it by the excessive profits it affords, has engendered the keenest' rivalry. Unfortunately, that rivalry has led, not to the perfection of the product, but to the cheapening of production by employment of rice, glucose, corn and other substitutes for good barley malt; the use of various drugs to take the place of hops or to give supposably desirably effects of flavor, color and headiness, or to compel the thirst of the drinker, and the evil abbreviation of the time necessary for honest brewing. The latter wickedness is perhaps the worst, as it is the one most generally practiced. Four months at least should elapse after beer is brewed before it is drunk, to give time for the proper fermentation and clearing from the baleful yeast germs and impure matter that in its earlier processes it necessarily contains. But in our local beer fermentation is artificially stopped and the stuff is vended when it is no more than fourteen days to two months old. At best, very new beer is blended with that slightly older. Brewers claim that 50 per cent, of properly fermented beer six months old and 50 per cent, of two months old and but half fermented gives 100 per cent, of beer four months old, which is on a par with the affirmation that one fresh egg and one rotten egg mixed gives two good eggs. The universal practice of adding half a pound of bicarbonate of soda to each barrel of beer is a very bad one for drinkers.

We get some fairly good beer from Detroit, Milwaukee, -Cincinnati, and other Western cities, and in Philadelphia there is one notably good beer made by an honest and eccentric old German, but good beer made in or near New York, even by brewers who in times past have most loudly claimed honesty for their product, can only be hoped for as a thing of the future, when it shall be necessary to keep intelligent people from discarding beer altogether. —James H. Connelly, in The Cook.