A great deal has been said, pro and con, on the subject of the propriety of the use of other matter than malted barley as a source of saccharine material for brewing purposes. There may be said to be three ways of substituting saccharine material. First, other grain may be used for malting; second, unlimited starchy matter, that is whole grain, may be added to the malt before it is mashed, the latter being diluted as it were, for the diastase in the malt has converting power sufficient for considerably more starch than is contained in itself; third, the saccharine matter may be supplied already converted, as in commercial starch-sugar, or glucose, cane sugar, inverted cane sugar, etc. Of these different substitutes the third class is probably the more objectionable, as beer brewed from such saccharine matter is lacking in various constituents derived from the grain, which are important additions to its nutritive power, namely, the phosphatic salts and the nitrogenous bodies.

1 Blyth.

In much the same way would bread made from starch alone be lacking in nutritive value.

There is no way of determining directly or absolutely that a beer has been brewed partially from glucose, but it may be inferred from its small content of those constituents which are contained in malt, but not in glucose, such as phosphoric acid and albuminoids, and the existence in the ash of large proportions of such salts as are known to form a large part of the ash of commercial starch-sugar, as sulphates. Konig gives .03 per cent. of phosphoric acid as the lowest limit for a beer containing 5 per cent. of extract or over.

The association of Bavarian chemists depends on the estimation of the nitrogen for the detection of the use of malt substitutes, and establishes the minimum of .65 per cent. of nitrogen (4 per cent. of albuminoids) in the extract. It is very evident that these figures are too high for American beers; only two of the samples examined, Nos. 4821 and 4823, contain less than .05 per cent. of phosphoric acid, and these are both imported beers; while the average content of the samples of American beer is .077. Not a single one of the samples contains as low as .65 per cent. of nitrogen in the extract, most of them containing about 1 per cent., while some give over 2 per cent. Dr. Englehardt's samples show a still higher average per cent. of phosphoric acid. Unfortunately there was no determination of the albuminoids in his samples. Yet it is a well-known fact that very few beers are made in this country without more or less malt substitution. Nothing can settle this point and enable the analyst to decide positively whether malt substitutes have been used until a standard is established by the analysis of a large number of samples known to be brewed from pure malt alone.