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37
beer, and they have no concern as to the materials from
which the beer has been brewed. In fact, the revenue
officers do not administer the Adulteration Acts. They
administer the Revenue Acts. When they punish a
publican for making three barrels of beer out of two, they
punish him for defrauding the Revenue by selling "beer"
on which no tax has been paid, they do not punish him
for poisoning his customers with brewers' chemicals. One
large question, therefore, arises as to what is to be understood
as "malt" under the Adulteration Acts Another
large question comes in as to the water allowable for the
manufacture of food articles. Is it right to use for such
purposes a water which is unfit for a municipal water
supply?
A vinegar manufactured in the way which the public
expect when they buy "a pure malt vinegar" contains
nothing except what has been brought into it by the barley,
the yeast, and a good drinking-water. Traces of sulphuric
acid are brought into such vinegar by the oxidation of
minute quantities of sulphur which exist in the barley,
and by minute quantities of sulphates which exist in almost
all drinking-waters. The traces of sulphuric acid thus
brought into "a pure malt vinegar" do not amount to
more than from 1 to 3 parts in 10,000 of the finished
vinegar. Such traces—i.e., .01 to .03 per cent.—of
sulphuric acid, belong naturally to a genuine malt liquor
or to a genuine malt vinegar. But all sulphuric acid beyond
that .01 to .03 per cent. that may be contained in the
finished vinegar, has been added either to the vinegar or
to the materials out of which the vinegar was made. Such
sulphuric acid is "a foreign ingredient." It is not material
whether it has been poured into the finished vinegar as
oil of vitriol, whether it has been put into the rice and
other grain which is called "malt," whether it has been
put into the vat as gypsum out of the quarry, or as a
solution of gypsum out of a well dug into a vein of gypsum.
As to the percentage of acetic acid, a vinegar may be
brewed strong or weak, just as beer may.