A treatise on the art of making good and wholesome bread of wheat, oats, rye, barley, and other farinaceous grain : exhibiting the alimentary properties and chemical constitution of different kinds of bread corn, and of the various substitutes used for bread, in different parts of the world / by Frederick Accum.

  • Accum, Friedrich Christian, 1769-1838.
Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the art of making good and wholesome bread of wheat, oats, rye, barley, and other farinaceous grain : exhibiting the alimentary properties and chemical constitution of different kinds of bread corn, and of the various substitutes used for bread, in different parts of the world / by Frederick Accum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    gists or grocers convicted of supplying him with any of them, or who have them in their possession, are liable to severe penal- ties ; and Mr. Accum gives a list of twenty-nine convictions for this offence, from the year 1812 to 1819. From the year 1813 to 1819, the number of brewers prosecuted and convicted of using illegal ingredients in their breweries, amounts to thirty- four. Numerous seizures have also been made during the same period at various breweries, and in the warehouses of brewers’- druggists, of illegal ingredients, to be used in the brewing of beer, some of them highly deleterious. Malt liquors, after they are delivered by the brewer to the retail-dealer, are still destined to undergo various mutations before they reach the consumer. It is a common practice with the retailers of beer, though it be contrary to law, to mix table- beer with strong beer; and, to disguise this fraud, recourse is had to various expedients. It is a well known property of ge- nuine beer, that when poured from one vessel into another, it bears a strong white froth, without which professed judges would not pronounce the liquor good. This property is lost, however, when table-beer is mixed with strong beer; and to restore it, a mixture of what is called beer-heading is added, composed of common green vitriol, alum, and salt. To give a pungent taste to weak insipid beer, capsicum and grains of paradise, two highly acrid substances, are employed; and, of date, a con- centrated tincture of these articles has appeared for sale in the prices-current of brewers’-druggists. To bring beer foiward, as it is technically called, or to make it hard, a portion of sul- phuric acid is mixed with it, which, in an instant, produces an imitation of the age of eighteen months ; and stale, half-spoiled, or sour beer, is converted into mild beer, by the simple admix- ture of an alkali or an alkaline earth; oyster-shell powder, and subcarbonate of potash, or soda, being usually employed for that purpose. In order to show that these deceptions are not imaginary, Mr. Accum refers to the frequent convictions of brewers for those fraudulent practices, and to the seizures which have been made at different breweries of illegal ingredi- ents—a list of which, and of the proprietors of the breweries where they were seized, he has extracted from the Minutes of the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to In- quire into the Price and Quality of Beer. It may be observed, that while some of the sophistications of beer appear to be per- fectly harmless, other substances are frequently employed for this purpose which are highly deleterious and which must gradually undermine the health of those by whom they are used.