Drinks of the World

The dictionary definition, or rather description, of Beer is “an alcoholic liquor made from any farinaceous grain, but generally from barley.” This barley clause is, of course, not true in all countries, nor is beer always made from a farinaceous grain. For the rest, the description is all that could be desired. After the barley is malted and grained, its fermentable substance is extracted by hot water. To this extract or infusion hops, or some other plant of an agreeable bitterness, are added, and it is afterwards boiled for some time, both to concentrate it and to obtain all the useful matters from the hops. The liquor is subsequently allowed to ferment in vats. The time allowed for fermentation depends upon the quality and kind of beer. After it has become clear it is stored for drink.

This ordinary popular description of beer will be probably sufficient to satisfy the general reader. But we must add to it a second explanation of beer, which is applied to a fermented extract, not from any farinaceous grain, but from the roots and other parts of various plants, as ginger, spruce-sap, beet, molasses, and many more. The scientific inquirer may learn the mysteries of malting and brewing, which are very nearly distinct trades, in the many treatises on beer-making which have adorned the literature of this and other countries. In these he may read as much as he wills of the steeping of the barley, its extension, its absorption of water, and the time occupied in this process; of the couching and sweating, as it is called, a result of the partial germination of the grain; of the flooring, or spreading out like hay over a field; of the kiln-drying, or the introduction of the half-germinated grain into a kiln with a perforated floor, with the necessary and variable amount of heat beneath it. And if all this is not enough, he may continue to read at full length of cornings or cummings, of pale and amber-coloured malt, of grinding the malt, of washing the malt thus ground, of boiling the worts with hops, of cooling the worts, of fermenting the worts, and, finally, of clearing and storing.

Beer is probably a word of German, as ale, signifying the same thing, is of Scandinavian origin. But the source of the German word is a moot question of comparative philology. Those interested in this matter may find abundant information in a note inserted by M. A. Schleicher in the Zeitschrift of Kuhn. We are led thereby to a Gothic form, pius, which in its turn conducts us to the Lithuanian pyvas. Pyvas or pivas—since etymology is a science dans laquelle les consonants font peu de chose, et les voyelles rien de tout—may be easily attached to the secondary root piv found in the Sanskrit pivâmi. In Indo-European tongues, and in accordance with the dictum of Voltaire, p, b, v, are interchangeable as labials. And so we come to the conclusion that pivas, or its descendant beer, means nothing else but drink; or, in other words, that this particular form of drink is the drink par excellence. And so we might rest content, were it not for the uneasy scruples of a certain M. Pictet, who has introduced a Slavic origin. But of etymology this taste will suffice.

Twenty centuries before the Christian era, Osiris, according to some authors, invented beer,[103] and according to others it has been at all times a drink of the Hebrews. We have, indeed, heard of Adam’s ale, but that term has been generally applied to a species of drink which would hardly come under our present category. It is perhaps more probable that the beverage of Osiris and the early Hebrews was a simple infusion of barley without more. Pliny, however, Theophrastus, and Tacitus, speak of beer as known from very early times to the people of the North, who were prevented by their situation from the cultivation of wine.[104]

The ancient beer of Egypt is compared by Diodorus Siculus to wine on account of its strength and flavour. This Egyptian beer is indeed spoken of by Herodotus as barley wine, a title which still survives in some of the windows of our public-houses. At present beer is the habitual drink of the English, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian races. A drink, better called barley water than beer, appears to have been the favourite beverage of the Danes and Anglo-Saxons, our ancestors in the remote past. Before Christianity had enlightened and corrected their views about the delights of a future state, these benighted folk supposed that the chief felicity enjoyed by the good—in those days synonymous with the brave—after their death and transplantation into Odin’s paradise, would be to drink in large goblets large quantities of ale. Perpetual intoxication thus entered largely into their conception of celestial joy.

Beer as we understand it—modified, that is, by the introduction of the hop—was probably little known in England before the beginning of the sixteenth century. The varieties of beer at the present time are numerous. Some of them will be considered later on in detail. There are, however, only three principal types of fabrication,—the Belgian, Bavarian, and English. The beers of England, as of France, and for the most part of Germany, become sour by the contact of air. This defect is absent from Bavarian beers.

So favourite a drink has, of course, been largely adulterated. Taste, colour, and smell are frequently due to unscrupulous falsifications. Bitterness is produced by strychnine, aloes, nux vomica, gentian, quassia, centaury, pyrethrum, absinthe, and many other ingredients. Colour is obtained by liquorice, chicory, and caramel; and flavour by other additions, which perhaps it is better not to particularize. Water, of course, is added to beer, as to most drinks, to enlarge the quantity and therefore the price. Potatoes are frequently a substitute for grain. Potash is introduced to give the much-desired “head,” chalk to diminish acidity, and chloride of sodium, or common salt, for the sake of what is called a piquant flavour. It were well if these little eccentricities of the beer vendors had here their confine; but the sacred hunger for gold has added, alas! to these, virulent and narcotic poisons,[105] such as belladonna and opium, henbane and picric or carbazotic acid. In the city of London this kind of adulteration was formerly, it was fondly imagined, to some extent prevented by some ancient guardians, known as ale-conners, who had the right of entering all public-houses and tasting their ales.

Only the most important beers of different countries are given in the following list, arranged alphabetically for convenience of reference:—

Africa.

Captain Clapperton (Expedition to Africa, i., 133, 187) found at Wow-wow, the metropolis of Borghoo, a kind of ale bearing the name of pitto, obtained from the same grain as that used for the same purpose in Dahomey, and by a process nearly similar to the brewing of beer in England from malt, only that no hops were added, a defect which prevented it keeping for any length of time. The people of the countries from the Gambia to the Senegal use a kind of beer called ballo. At a village called Wezo there is a beer called otèe, a sort of ale made from millet, of a very enlivening nature. Another sort of beer, called gear, is found at Ragada. At Whidah an excellent beer is made from two sorts of maize. The Jews at Taffilet use beer of their own brewing. Isaacs (Travels in Africa, ii., 319) says that the Zoola nation, between Delagoa Bay and the Bay of Natal, has a description of beer, with which the natives are wont to get drunk. This beer is made from a seed called loopoco, something in size and colour like rape. It has powerful fermenting properties, and forms a beverage of a light brown hue, potent and stimulating. In Sofala a beer is made from rice and millet; also in Abyssinia is to be found a drink of many names—tallah, or selleh, or donqua, or sona—commonly brewed from wheat, millet or barley, mixed with a bitter herb called geso. According to Bruce, Abyssinian beer of an inferior kind is made from tocusso. This is really a variety of bouza, which is also made from teff, the poa abyssinica of botanists.

America.

Persimon beer, from the fruit of the date plum (Diospyros Virginiana), is drunk in North America. In South America, long before the Spanish conquest, the Indians prepared and drank a beer obtained from Indian corn, called chica or maize beer. The process followed in making chica is very similar to that of beer brewing in Britain. The maize is moistened with water, allowed partially to germinate and dried in the sun. The maize malt so prepared is bruised, treated with warm water, and allowed to ferment. The liquor is yellow, and has an acid taste something like cider. It is in common demand on the west coast. In the valleys of the Sierra the maize malt is subjected to human mastication, not invariably by the young and beautiful girls, but by old ladies and gentlemen who still retain, by the indulgence of nature, the requisite dental arrangement. The saliva mixed with the chewed morsel is supposed to produce a more excellent chica. Indeed, the result is so choice that this kind is commonly called Peruvian nectar. Chica can also be made from barley, rice, peas, grapes, pine-apples, and manioc. The Brazilians have a beer called Vinho de Batatas, from the Batata[106] root. Sora, a Peruvian beer, was formerly forbidden by the Incas because of its extremely intoxicating nature.

Austria.

The most famous beer is perhaps the Pilsener, or white beer, from Pilsen in Bohemia, the favourite drink in Vienna. Gratzer is brewed from wheat malt.

Bavaria.

The peculiar flavour of the Bavarian ale is perhaps a result of the very free use of pitch or resinous matters to protect the wood of the fermenting tun, but it seems more probable that it is due to the commixture of pine tops. Schenk beer is draught beer, in contradistinction to Lager, or store beer. The one is drunk in summer, the other in winter. Bock beer[107] and Salvator, dark heavy kinds of stout, are both well known. Kaiserslautern is the name of a famous brewage in Rhenish Bavaria.

Belgium.

White beers, the result of a mixture of oats and wheat, called Walgbaert and Happe, were made in Brussels in the fifteenth century. Roetbier and Zwartbier were, as their names tell us, red and black beers. Cuyte was at one time a favourite and aristocratic drink. It has since fallen from its high estate. There are some forty kinds of beer, at least, now manufactured in Brussels. The white beer of Louvain in South Brabant is the most esteemed; but an Englishman has described it as having the flavour of pitch, soapsuds and vinegar. The winter brew is termed Faro, the summer Lambic. The Faro is by some said to be prepared from the strong Lambic and a small beer called Mars. All Belgium beers, according to the opinion of some experts, have a certain stamp of vinosity. In addition to the Lambic and Faro, which are distinguished in this particular, may be mentioned the Uitzet of Flanders, the Arge, of Antwerp, and Fortes-Saisons of the Walloons. The white sparkling beers of Louvain are the best of summer beers, they are succeeded by those of Hougaerde and Diest. The brown beers of Malines and the Saison of Liege possess good reports. Latterly the Grisettes of Gembloux, the beer of Dinant, the blonde of Buiche, and the ale of Oppuers have been creditably mentioned.

Borneo.

The aborigines[108] of Borneo, if we are to believe Commodore Roggewein,[109] are the “basest, most cruel and perfidious people in the world.” They are “honest, industrious, strongly affectionate and self-denying,” if we are to credit the account of the Italian missionary, Antonio Ventimiglia. When such diversity of opinion is manifested about the people, some discordance might naturally be supposed to exhibit itself in the matter of their potations. But this is not thus. The great drink of the Beajus is allowed on all hands to be the ava or cava, prepared from the piper methysticum, or intoxicating pepper plant. This is a shrub with thick roots, long heart-shaped leaves, and a clump or spike of berries. The root is chewed only—it is satisfactory to learn—by young girls with good teeth and dainty mouths.[110] Water or cocoa-nut milk is poured on the masticated pulp, fermentation ensues, and the Beajus drink and become drunken. The mass of chewed matter is kneaded with considerable dexterity by practised professionals. “Every tongue is mute,” says Mariner—one of the crew of a vessel seized by the natives in the commencement of this century,—“while this operation is going on; every eye is upon them, watching every motion of their arms as they describe the various curvilinear turns essential to success.” Ava is also drunk in Otaheite, in the Feejee islands, and those of the Marquesas and of the South Seas.

China.

Tar-asun, extracted from barley or wheat, is the beer of China. It is sweet, and commonly drunk warm, before distillation. The mixed liquor from which it is prepared is called tchoo, or wine; after that, sam or san is prefixed, to show its hot nature. Samtchoo—the word is spelt in many ways—may, says Barrow (Travels, p. 304), be considered the basis of the best arrack, itself a mere rectification of the above spirit with the addition of molasses and the juice of the cocoa-nut tree. Bell’s Travels, ii., 9.