1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

199

Some of them will be considered later on There are, however, only three principal — the Belgian, Bavarian, and Eng-

numerous.

detail.

in

types of fabrication,

lish. The beers of England, as of France, and for the most part of Germany, become sour by the contact of This defect is absent from Bavarian beers. So favourite a drink has, of course, been largely adulterated. Taste, colour, and smell are frequently due to unscrupulous falsifications. Bitterness is pro- duced by strychnine, aloes, nux vomica, gentian, quassia, centaury, pyrethrum, absinthe, and many other ingredients. Colour is obtained by liquorice, chicory, and caramel ; and flavour by other additions, which perhaps it is better not to particularize. Water, of course, is added to beer, as to most drinks, to enlarge the quantity and therefore the price. Pota- toes are frequently a substitute for grain. Potash is introduced to give the much-desired '"head" chalk to diminish acidity, and chloride of sodium, or common salt, for the sake of what is called a piquant flavour. It were well if these little eccentricities of the beer vendors had here their confine ; but the sacred hunger for gold has added, alas ! to these, virulent and narco- tic poisons,^ such as belladonna and opium, henbane and picric or carbazotic acid. In the city of London this kind of adulteration was formerly, it was fondly imagined, to some extent prevented by some ancient air.

1 The world has little altered since the time of Martial (i. 19). " scelus estjugulare Falernum^ Et dare Campano toxica sava mero'^