Beer : Health and Nutrition

Beer Through History 41
There were no such verses about beer. In 1722, 33 million bushels of malt were used
for brewing and annual consumption was running at a barrel of beer per head (King
1947).
There was, however, great concern regarding the wholesomeness of some of the
brews that were being made, leading to a book in 1738, anonymously authored, entitled
The London and Country Brewer (Drummond & Wilbraham 1958). The writer claimed
that it was to inform a public who had long ‘suffered great prejudices from unwholesome
and unpleasant beers and ales, by the badness of malts, underboiling of worts,
mixing of injurious ingredients, the unskilfulness of brewers’. Reference was made to
the use of the seeds of a poisonous berry (Cocculus indicus) to afford bitterness and
a ‘heady’ character. Coriander seeds and capsicum (red pepper) were used variously
to give avour or ‘bite’ to thin beers or ones that had ‘turned’. Tobacco and liquorice
were not unheard of in the context of beer, despite an Act of Parliament in the reign of
George III that prohibited many adulterants.
The brewer’s concerns with the beer souring, however, were very real. The London
and Country Brewer described the use of ‘balls’ to preserve beer in casks, such balls
comprising alabaster or marble, oyster shells, chalk, horse-bean our, red saunders,
grains of paradise, Florentine orrice-root, coriander seeds, cloves, hops, isinglass and
treacle.
According to Drummond and Wilbraham (1958),
…the marble, shells and chalk served to neutralise acidity as it developed, the
bean- our and isinglass helped to ‘ ne’ the beer, carrying down impurities to
form a sludge at the bottom of the cask, while the coriander, orris-root, cloves etc
imparted a avour which would help mask the earthy taste caused by the addition
of so much lime.
The same authors observe, though, that the treatment tended to make beer go at, leading
in turn to the addition of ‘headings’ to promote foaming. A popular treatment was
iron sulphate, which produced a ‘head like a colly ower’.
Twenty- rst-century beer drinkers should be relieved that none of these practices
prevails, save for the use in some quarters of the entirely wholesome isinglass nings
(see Chapter 3).
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the impact of taxation and increasing
imports of tea and coffee saw a change in domestic drinking habits – tea instead of ale
for breakfast.