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52
VINEGAR PROSECUTIONS.
It will be seen that, in cases 2 and 4, samples of vinegar were
found to be charged with an amount of sulphates (chiefly
gypsum) which is not found in a genuine malt vinegar made from
barley, barley-malt, a good drinking water, and yeast. A
"genuine malt vinegar" so made contains sulphates which yield
only minute quantities of sulphuric acid (H2S04), say from •01 to
•03 per cent. Sample No. 2 was found to contain sulphates
(chiefly gypsum) which yielded •156 per cent. of sulphuric acid
(H2S04). Sample No. 4 was found to contain sulphates (chiefly
gypsum) which yielded •143 per cent. of sulphuric acid (H2S04).
Such sulphuric acid is either put into the vinegar or into the
materials out of which the vinegar is brewed. The conversion of
maize, rice, and other cheap or damaged grain into fermentable
glucose by digestion under heat and pressure with dilute sulphuric
acid has, since my report on vinegar adulteration,* become widely
and very distressingly known to the public in consequence of the
introduction of arsenic into beer through the use of a rough
cheap sulphuric acid for the purpose of so manufacturing glucose.
In some cases, sulphuric acid used for the manufacture of brewer's
substitutes—such as glucose from rice or maize—also introduces
the gypsum. The sulphuric acid thus introduced has to be afterwards
neutralised by means of lime, thus forming gypsum or sulphate
of lime. In other cases where genuine "malt liquor" is
brewed, gypsum as a mineral is dissolved into the water used for
brewing in order to serve as a preservative, and to give brilliancy
to the beer. In still other cases mineralized or natural
gypsum waters are used for brewing, and this is called brewing
with "pure spring water"—such water being not "a good
drinking water" and being altogether ineligible for a municipal
water supply. It is by one or other of these methods of manufacture
that sulphuric acid in these quantities is introduced into beers—
and similarly into vinegars. Full details on this subject will be
found in my Report for 1899, already cited. It was entirely
by this use of sulphuric acid that the arsenical poisoning by means
of beer was caused.
In cases No. 2 and No. 4, prosecutions were ordered by the
late Vestry of St. James's, and it was found that the vinegars in
question were manufactured by two of the oldest and wealthiest
firms in the vinegar trade. Queen's counsel and a string of
* Vide my Report for year 1899, pages 34-47. Vide also Notes on Vinegar,
"The British Food Journal," August 1900, pages 210-214.