INTERESTING TO COFFEEDRINKERS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 139, 21 April 1879, Page 3

INTERESTING TO COFFEEDRINKERS.

Coffee drinkers will read with interest

some observations made by the principal of the Inliuin Revenue Laboratory, in his annual report jus printed, relative to an inspjius method of adulterating that articles which has lately been discovered. Owing to the ease with which roasted vegetable matter can lie prepared so as to look like coffee, substitutes for or adulterations of it arc frequent. The substance most recently detected as an adulterant is dote-stones, which, after being roasted and ground, form such an imitation of coffee as would when mixed with the

genuine article readily deceive the consumer. Tlie early detection and suppression of this mode of adulteration were effected by the Inland Revenue autheritics at Somerset Ifimse, in consequence of information sen by a supervisor at Liverpool that many tons of dates stone, a refuse from the mainucturo of spirits .it one of the distileriis there, and which had up to that time ken considered useless, were being boujjht by a foreign gentleman to bo sent to Manchester, anil believed to he intended r.sr.n wlultcraiitof coffee. The

inquiry made led to the discovery that a manufactory had been started in Manchester for the preparation of "Melilotine coffee," a compound in about equal proportions of coffee, chicory, and date-stones. A saizuro has since been mado there of about seven to\s of" JFolilotine coffee" and of the prepared date stones, The manufactory had barely got into working order, and very little of the " Melilotine" coffee had been sent into consumption.