MYSTERIES OF BEER-MAKING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9034, 21 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

MYSTERIES OF BEER-MAKING.

Mr. Justice Kay, in the Chancery Division, lately had before him the case of Briant v. Faulkner, in which the plaintiff, an analytical chemist, was unsuccessful in his attempt to prove a partnership with the defendant, a brewer, in a process for enabling brewers to obtain invert sugar from the sugar cane. The interest of the case was concentrated in his lordship's remarks on the adulteration of beer. Mr. Justice Kay said that the case had initiated them into some of tho mysteries of beer manufacture. It appeared, that instead of beer being made from good and wholesome malt and hops, a process had been invented for concocting a beverage from invert sugar, and this was drunk by unsuspecting persons who beleived that they wore drinking beer. Tho defendant in this case was a brewer, and believing that brewers might make invert sugar from sugar cane themselves, he took counsel with the plaintiff, an analytical chemist. This must have been a doubtful advantage to the consumers of the beer, for sulphuric acid and gypsum were employed, the feature of tho invention being the doubling of tho sulphuric acid, and then neutralising by means of gypsum, and this stuff wiis then sold by some brewers and called beer.