other vegetable aliment, requires much stronger efforts of the stomach to effect digestion. Hence we are induced to deprecate the custom of inundating, as it were, patients, after their recovery from chronic diseases, with soups, broths, and spoon-meat of every description.
BEER is a fermented, spirituous liquor, prepared from any farinaceous grain, but generally from barley; and, strictly speaking, is a vinous production, serving as a substitute for wine.
As we propose to give a short analysis of the art of Brewing, under that head, we shall here only observe, that all kinds of beer are produced by extracting a proportionate quantity of malt, whether made of wheat, barley or oats, in boiling water; then suffering it to remain at rest, in a degree of warmth requisite to induce a vinous fermentation, and afterwards managing it in the manner as will be described under the article just mentioned.—See also Fermentation, and Malt.
Although malt alone might doubtless produce a liquor possessing the spirituous properties of beer, yet such a preparation would speedily turn sour and insipid, unless impregnated with hops, or another aromatic and bitter principle, derived from vegetable substances, which not only render it less liable to undergo the putrefactive stage of fermentation, but also impart to it an agreeable bitterness. Of this nature is the hop in a very eminent degree, the price of which, however, has of late years been so exorbitant, that speculative brewers have substituted a variety of other vegetable ingredients, and especially the wood, bark, and root of quassia (which see.) Independently of the inferior price of this drug, when compared to the indigenous hop, there can be no reasonable objection to its use; as it is one of the rew astringent substances possessing a considerable share of the bitter principle, without partaking of the narcotic, heating, and intoxicating properties of other plants.
It would be difficult to lay down an accurate criterion of the best and most wholesome beer; as its relative strength and flavour, or the immediate effect it produces on the palate, are generally considered the most essential requisites. But a well-brewed and wholesome beer, whether ale or porter, ought to be of a bright colour, and perfectly transparent, that is, neither too high nor pale; it should have a pleasant and mellow taste, sharp and agreeably bitter, without being acrid or tart; it should leave no particular sensation on the tongue; and, if drunk in any considerable quantity, it must neither produce speedy intoxication, with its concomitant effects of sleep, nausea, vomiting, head-ach, languor, want of appetite, &c. nor should it be retained too long in the urinary passages, or be too quickly discharged.
Dr. James Stonehouse, of Northampton, inserted the following recipe for making Beer of Treacle, in the Gentl. Mag. for January, 1758: "To eight quarts of boiling water, put one pound of treacle, a quarter of an ounce of ginger, and two bay leaves. Let the whole boil for a quarter of an hour, then cool and work it with yeast, the same as other beer:" or, "Take one bushel of malt, with as much water and hops as if two bushels of malt were allowed; put
