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GLORIOUS BEER
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have conveyed the bulk of my technical know
ledge of brewing from standard works on the
subject.
It will be gathered from some previous
remarks that all is not beer that's bitter ; and
although it would seem impossible to find a
cleaner, healthier, or more strengthening drink
than the " pure beer " of commerce, brewed from
good English or Scotch barley, Kentish hops,
and fair spring-water, how about the wash sold
in some licensed houses which is " fetched up"
with foot-sugar, bittered with quassia, and mixed
with salt and any nasty flavourer which is
handy ?
The old stories about the carcass of a horse
placed in the London stout, to give it " body," and
the mysterious disappearance of an Italian organ-
grinder, together with his monkey and infernal
machine, just outside a high-class brewery, are
probably apocryphal. And although the ancients
undoubtedly put a red cock-—-the older the better
—into ale, on occasion, the nineteenth century
Briton, for the most part, if the rooster be. too
tough to serve as a boiled bonne louche with
parsley-and-butter, usually makes Cock-a-Leekie
of him. And thereby hangs a tale.
When my firm was running a small chicken-
ranche we once reared an unfortunate fowl, who
had curvature of the spine, almost from the
fracture of his shell. He. was a weakling, and
his brethren and sistren, after the manner of
birds, beasts, and fishes, who " go for" the
anaemic and infirm, persecuted him exceedingly,
and pecked most of his feathers off".
Being a