Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1881 — Adulterated Beer. [ARTICLE]

Adulterated Beer.

JJtew York Sun. The proportion of substitutes which brewers venture to use runs from 33 J to 46 per cent, by weight, and that is the same with gluoose as with the cereals. A brewer practicing such adulteration would, then, upon the lowest basis stated, use, instead of say 86 pounds of barley malt. (the highest allowance ordinarily for a barrel of beer.), only 57f pounds of barley malt and 28$ pounds of corn, or 36 pounds of glucose, which would be equivalent to about 26 pounds of the solid extract at the rate of 40 degrees Baume. It is reported that the German Government has forbidden the use of substitutes for barley malt, which would seem to indicate a lack of appreciation of the very innocuous character claimed for them by their advocates, upoh the part of authorities whose good udgment iu the matter of beer will hardly admit of question. Even if their use cannot legally be prohibited in this country, it does seem to many beer driDkers as if it might be both practicable and advisable to have to have some such 4aw enforced as that Droposed a couple of months ago in the New York legislature and promptly sat upon by the influence of the brewers, by whieh the makers of glucose, corn, rice and other bogus beer should be compelled to brand their kege with a veracious statement of the actual contents. Such beers may be all well enough for those who like them —and it is a pity their use cannot be confined to those who make them—but, as theStaats-Zeitung said a couple of years ago: “Whatever'they may be and whatever they they should be called, tney certainly are not genuine German lager beer, Which can only be made from hops and malt.” .

I is emphatically denied by brewsters that they habitually employ any substitutes for hops,but every beer drinker knows of beers in common sale which have a great deal of some bitter element that is entirely devoid of the flavor of the hop. And it is also a significent fact Bolley’s TecbnlschChamische ITnfcersuehungen, a work of the highest authority, affords a list or tests for the detection, by analysis, of the presence in beer of picric acid, capsfcine, alvetiue, daphuine, quassia, menyan thine, absynthine, colocy thine, gentian and picrotoxin. The latter material is the active principle of the poisonous “fish berries.” The principal additions to beer to prevent its souring, to give strength enough supposabiy to check butyric, acetic, aud lactic acid fermentations, and to sweeten it. are bi-sulpbite x>( lime, bi-carbonate of - soda, salicylic acid, alcohol and glycerine. Generally these are employed in such small quantities as not to be particularly dangerous to the consumer; but there was a case in Germany not so long ago in which so much bi carbonate of soda had been used to correct sour beer that persons drinking it were attacked by severe and even dangerous purging. The brewet who played that tiick upon his customers was fined heavily. The bi-sulphate of lime absorbs oxygen and prevents the developeinent of acetic acid, for which reeson ft is much used in bottling beer. The salicyelic acid is a strong disinfectant and a powerful anti-ferment, and is largely employed in foreign beers received in this country as also in beer shipped from the United States to hot climates. In the proportion of 1 to 2,000, in which it Is generally used, it cannot be regarded as injurious.