Porter beer

“ The strength of all kinds of beer, like that of wine, depends on the quantity of spirit contained in a given bulk of the liquor.
The reader need scarcely be told, that of no article there are more varieties than of porter. This, no doubt, arises from the different mode of manufacturing the beer, although the ingredients are the same. This difference is more striking in the porter manufactured among country brewers, than it is in the beer brewed by the eminent London porter brewers. ”

“ To impart to porter this property of frothing when poured from one vessel into [Pg 134] another, or to produce what is also termed a cauliflower head, the mixture called beer-heading, composed of common green vitriol (sulphate of iron,) alum, and salt, is added. This addition to the beer is generally made by the publicans. [61] It is unnecessary to genuine beer, which of itself possesses the property of bearing a strong white froth, without these additions; and it is only in consequence of table beer being mixed with strong beer, that the frothing property of the porter is lost. ”

“ The most common form in which alcohol is employed in this country is that of beer. Beer is distinguished from other alcoholic beverages by the addition of hops, which are the female catkins of a plant extensively grown in this country. Case 35 contains the materials from which porter is brewed, and illustrates the changes which malt undergoes during its conversion into beer. The analysis of stout, porter, pale ale, mild ale, and strong ale are exhibited in Case 35, and the quantities of water, alcohol, sugar, and acetic acid are shown in an imperial pint of each. ”

“ Others break their old beer into the breaking batch (or vessel into which the porter is run before being pumped into the vats) with the mild beer. This mode of Working may also be unsafe; for unless the fermentation has been vigorous and healthy, and the old beer brought into a fit state for mixing, no combination will take place; the beer will retain a double flavour, and be occasionally unfit to be sent out, unless by being brought into proper condition, and again mixed off with mild beer. ”

“ Pale ale is manufactured from the finest and lightest dried malt, and the choicest hops, the latter in excess. Mild ale differs from pale ale in being sweeter, stronger, and almost free from the flavour of the hop. Bitter ale or BITTER BEER has, as a rule, less body than pale ale, and is more highly hopped. Table beer is a weak liquor commonly containing three or four times the proportion of water usually present in ordinary beer or ale. Porter differs from ale chiefly in its being artificially coloured by the use of roasted malt, which also imparts to it a peculiar bitter flavour. ”

“ Particular care must be taken that the beer in which the isinglass is dissolved, be perfectly clear, and thoroughly stale.—By attending to these directions, any person may brew as good, if not better porter, than they can be supplied with from the public houses. Many notions have been artfully raised, that porter requires to be brewed in large quantities, and to be long stored, to render it sound and strong ”

“ A pint of Scotch ale, a pint of mild beer, half a pint of brandy, a pint of sherry, half a pound of loaf sugar, and plenty of grated nutmeg. This cup may be drank either hot or cold.
Egg Flip.
Add the whites and yolks of three eggs, beaten together with three ounces of lump sugar, to half a pint of strong ale; heat the mixture nearly to the boiling-point; then put in two wine-glasses of gin or rum (the former being preferable) , with some grated nutmeg and ginger; add another pint of hot ale, and pour the mixture frequently from one jug to another before serving. ”

“ The nutritive part of the beer is the undecomposed gum-sugar, and the starch-gum, not changed into sugar. Its quantity is very variable, according to the original starch of the wort, the length of the fermentation, and the age of the beer.
[106]
The main feature of good beer is fine colour and transparency; the production of which is an object of great interest to the brewer. Attempts to clarify it in the cask seldom fail to do it harm. The only thing that can be used with advantage for fining foul or muddy beer, is isinglass. For porter, as commonly brewed, it is frequently had recourse to. ”

“ But the publicans frequently, when they fine a butt of beer, by means of isinglass, adulterate the porter at the same time with table beer, together with a quantity of molasses and a small portion of extract of gentian root, to keep up the peculiar flavour of the porter ”

“ If the bere be well serued, and be fyned, and not new, it doth qualyfy heat of the liquer.”
The distinction between ale and beer as described by Boorde lasted for a hundred years or more. As hops came into general use, though malt liquors generally were now beer, the word ale was still retained, and was used whether the liquor it was intended to designate was {7} hopped or not. At the present day beer is the generic word, which includes all malt liquors; while the word ale includes all but the black or brown beers—porter and stout. ”

“ Brewing, which has run through eleven editions, after having stated the various ingredients for brewing porter, observes, "that however much they may surprise, however pernicious or disagreeable they may appear, he has always found them requisite in the brewing of porter, and he thinks they must invariably be used by those who wish to continue the taste, flavour, and appearance of the beer. ”

“ It will further have the good effect of recovering the beer or ale, thus filtered, from the flatness that will necessarily be induced by that operation, giving the liquor all the briskness and activity that can be wished for. If beer, porter, or ale, be intended for exportation to a warmer climate than our own, the operation will be found particularly suited to it. Choose your corks of the best quality, and steep them in pure strong spirit from the evening before you begin your bottling operation ”

“ The old writer who spoke of ale as being meat, drink, and clothing probably had no highly scientific knowledge of the chemical properties of the liquor he was extolling, but the statement—based, no doubt, on experience—can be called an exaggerated one.
Very satisfactory is it to know that in Ireland porter is steadily displacing whisky. Even in the western portions of the island, the younger generation—excepting, perhaps, on holidays, at fairs, and on other festive occasions—are taking most kindly to their “porther.” ”

“ Beer is seldom at the public-house what it was at the brewery. A late partner in one of the metropolitan breweries says:—‘It is quite notorious if you drink beer at the brewery, and at a public-house a little way off, you find it a very different commodity’ (4538) .
4. The drinks are adulterated, as well as diluted. Mr. Ridley, who has under his management certain offices for the analysation of alcoholic liquors, states that there are several recipes, such as [Pg 362] ‘To a barrel of porter [add] 12 gallons of liquor, 4 lbs. ”

“ For harvesters working in the almost tropical heat of an August sun, this is, no doubt, a wholesome drink, but it can hardly be called palatable. As a matter of fact, no non-alcoholic substitute has been put forward by the teetotal party which is in the least likely to take the place of porter; and until such beverage is invented—an event which we feel perfectly certain will never come to pass—the porter and stout brewers of the United Kingdom will have every opportunity of continuing to confer on the working classes the benefits of cheap and wholesome liquor. ”

“ A very important object indeed, is finings in the management of porter and brown beers, and sometimes the paler kinds need their agency before they will become transparently fine: without this quality no beer can be acceptable to the consumer, and should be always a particular aim of the brewers to obtain. Take five pounds of isinglass, beat each piece in succession on a stone or iron weight, until you find you can conveniently shred it into small pieces, and so treat every piece until you have got through the whole ”

“ On a large well-tinned copper stewpan place a gridiron, and on the gridiron the big lumps of sugar. Pour by degrees the Cognac over the sugar, lighting it as you pour it on. The sugar dissolves through the bars of the gridiron, and the spirit is burnt out: this constitutes caramel. Next add the sherry and fruity materials, which allow to digest for fifteen minutes, after which pour in the Moselle, and transfer the compound into a bowl. On serving add a bottle of champagne. Serve round in flat champagne-glasses with a spoon to each for extracting the fruit. (Cutler.)
ODE TO BEER.
Hail, beer! ”

“ About this time the London porter brewers vied with each other in building large vats, a practice they have now discontinued.
It would be difficult to imagine a liquor more suitable for the working classes than good porter—taken in moderation, of course. Not only does it afford the slight stimulant which, in another place, we have shown to be beneficial to the human body, but it also contains much {373} nutritive matter, both organic and inorganic, together with saccharine. ”

“ Some brewers who are jealous for the reputation of their beer employ a traveller, who visits the houses periodically, and tastes the various beers, to see that they are not reduced too much. This functionary is called the ‘Broad Cooper.’ When the Broad Cooper looks in upon Mr. Noggins, and wants to taste the porter, and the porter is below the mark, Mr. Noggins slyly draws a dash of stout into it ”

“ Old ballad makers have certainly sung in its praise, but it is a subject which few prose writers have touched upon, except in the most superficial manner. Modern song writers rarely take ale as their theme. The reason is not far to seek. The ale of other days—not the single beer rightly stigmatised as “whip-belly vengeance,” nor even the doble beer, but the doble-doble beer brewed against law, and beloved by the ale-knights of old—was of such mightiness that whoso drank of it, more often than not dashed off a verse or two in its praise. ”

“ If you want to hasten your beer for drinking, put the hops into the casks when they are warm; if your beer is for a long standing, put the hops in your casks when they are cold, giving them a stir to separate them in the beer.
Take care not to be under the necessity of tapping your ale or small beer before it has actually done working, for by so doing you will prevent it from becoming fine: new beer may be classed with new bread; for the newer you draw your beer the more there will be consumed; new beer is not so satisfying as it is when come to a more mature age. ”

“ This pre-eminence is attributed to the quality of the water, which seems peculiarly fitted for brewing purposes, and the fact that the large brewers there located use none but the finest malt and hops procurable. There is an old saying, that wherever an Englishman has trodden, and where has he not? there may be found an empty beer bottle. And, truly, he does carry the taste for his natural beverage wherever he goes, and the export trade is enormous, every ship wanting freight, filling up with bottled beer, as a safe thing. ”

“ Evelyn says that ale and beer, “brewed with these berries, being ripe, is an incomparable drink.”
Maize, beet-root, potatoes, parsnips, and other vegetables have each and all been used in the making of beer, but it seems very doubtful whether any combination of ingredients will ever equal the time-honoured partnership of malt and hops.
A writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1758 says: “In many parts of the Kingdom, a beer is made of treacle—thus: to eight quarts of boiling water put a pound of treacle, a quarter of an ounce of ginger, and two bay leaves. ”

“ Not only has the practice of domestic brewing much declined, but from the same causes there has been of late years an extraordinary and lamentable decrease in the numbers of small country brewers.
Although the name of home-brew carries with it many old associations and sentiments which we abandon with regret—memories of bright March beer and mellow old October, of snug ingle-nooks and raftered ceilings, and of kind, if homely, welcome—we cannot but admit, as on a hot day we drain our tankard of Burton bitter, or of world-famed London stout, that life has still its compensations. ”

“ The famous Hypocras, for instance, was flavoured with an infusion of brandy, pepper, ginger, cloves, grains of paradise, ambergris, and musk. A Duchess of St. Albans has left us a receipt for making “The Ale of health and strength,” which, it sufficeth to say, was a {385} decoction of nearly all the herbs in the garden (agreeable and otherwise) boiled up in small beer. Old worthies, when induced to give up their receipts for the public good, described these drinks under the head of “Kitchen physic.” ”

“ On the way you will meet with strange things and strange people, queer customs and quaint sayings and songs; you will watch malting and brewing as it was carried on five hundred years ago; you will stand by while the Flemings, who have just come to London, brew beer with the assistance of a “wicked weed called hoppes;” meanwhile Parliament will re-enact strange sumptuary laws and order that you brew only two kinds of ale or beer; you will be at times in the bad company of dissolute alewives who will whisper sad scandals in your ear ”

“ See Malt, Hops, Brewing, &c.
Purity. The leading characteristics of good beer are transparency, a fine colour, an agreeable semi-vinous flavour, and the property of remaining for several hours exposed in a glass or cup without becoming ‘flat’ or insipid. If the materials used were good, if the brewing was skilfully conducted, if the liquor has been carefully stowed in perfectly sweet casks or vessels, in a suitable cellar, for a sufficient time, and has not been tampered with, this will almost always be the case. ”