The alleged adulteration of beer

I’m returning to another of my favourite topics: adulteration.

Various horror stories were bandied about claiming all sorts of poisonous substances were added to beer, including drugs like opium. However hard of evidence of most of the claims is lacking. Prosecutions for adulteration mostly concerned either watering beer down or adding heading agents.

This article, reprinted in the brewers’ Guardian seems to confirm that. Adulteration does seem to have been pretty rife, but mostly in a harmless way

“THE ALLEGED ADULTERATION OF BEER.
BY J. MUTER, Ph.D.
So much has been said and written about the adulteration of beer, that we, doubtless in common with most of our readers, looked upon the publican as the great arch-adulterator, whose whole time was spent in poisoning his votaries, and we confidently expected to have some terrible revelations to make. But it is not really so, because we have not been able to find any single injurious adulteration. That some of the smaller brewers use tobacco, coccculus indicus, etc., has been only lately made clear by the reports of the chemists of the Excise, but that the practice is not so widespread as. imagined is quite apparent. The only thing which we have found that should not be there, is water, sugar, and in some cases salt. The following are the results:

I.—PORTER.
No.	Price per Quart.	Specific Gravity.	Alcohol.	Solid Extract.	Grains of salt per Gal.	Other adulterations.	ABV
1	3d	1.014	2.6	4.3	30.1	none	3.30
2	3d	1.014	2.7	5	42.5	none	3.43
3	3d	1.015	3.4	5.4	63	none	4.32
4	3d	1.017	2.5	5.7	43	none	3.18
5	3d	1.019	2.9	6.3	30.8	none	3.68
6	3d	1.015	3.2	5.4	30.1	none	4.06
7	3d	1.017	3	6.4	23.8	none	3.81
8	3d	1.010	2.8	4.2	48.8	none	3.56
9	3d	1.016	2.8	5.1	30.1	none	3.56
10	3d	1.021	2.3	6.2	35.7	none	2.92
II.—STOUT.
1	8d	1.021	6.1	7.5	18.1	none	7.75
2	8d	1.025	6.6	8.8	19	none	8.38
3	8d	1.025	5.5	9.2	42	none	6.99
4	8d	1.020	4.3	9.1	39	none	5.46
5	8d	1.015	4.5	6.3	40.5	none	5.72
6	8d	1.020	5.3	7.1	20.3	none	6.73
7	8d	1.015	3.3	4.5	18.2	none	4.19
8	8d	1.014	4.7	5.7	30.5	none	5.97
9	8d	1.020	2.5	5.9	22.1	none	3.18
10	8d	1.015	2.3	5.8	42.5	none	2.92
III - BITTER ALE.
1	8d	1.011	3.7	50.5	18.9	none	4.70
2	8d	1.011	4.4	5.1	27.3	none	5.59
3	8d	1.020	3.6	5.9	30.8	none	4.57
4	8d	1.013	3.5	5.7	22.4	none	4.45
5	8d	1.012	3.7	5.5	10.6	none	4.70
6	8d	1.014	4.2	5.5	14.4	none	5.33
7	8d	1.013	4.2	5.5	21.4	none	5.33
8	8d	1.012	5	5.2	14.8	none	6.35
9	8d	1.004	4.6	3.5	14.3	none	5.84
10	8d	1.013	3.5	5.7	22.4	none	4.45
IV.—OLD ALE.
1	8d	1.009	5.3	5	18.9	none	6.73
2	8d	1.012	5.3	5.8	39.4	none	6.73
3	8d	1.021	3.6	5.9	30.8	none	4.57
4	8d	1.010	5.6	5.4	63	none	7.11
5	8d	1.012	5.6	6.1	33	none	7.11
6	8d	1.011	5	5.5	14.3	none	6.35
7	8d	1.020	6.4	7.9	14.8	none	8.13
8	8d	1.016	7.3	7.1	14.3	none	9.27
9	8d	1.009	6	5.2	22	none	7.62
10	8d	1.020	6.2	7.3	20	none	7.87

These results speak for themselves, and require no comment. The porter is in most cases watered, salted, and the body restored by “foots” sugar. The stout is in some samples simply undiluted porter, and in others, it is treated as above. The two honourable exceptions were purchased in a good district in the south of London. The bitter ale seems to be the least tampered-with article of all, as the whole of the results were very uniform; while the old ale is not by any means the terribly potent fluid which people imagine it to be. While, therefore, it is evident that the publican knows the use of “liquor” as well as the milkman does that of “Simpson," we shall never more believe in the awful and occult mysteries of the cellar, and when we hear any of our friends complain of a violent headache “brought on by that terrible bad stuff, you know," we shall privately put the malady down to quantity rather than quality.—-Food Journal.”
"Brewers' Guardian, vol. 1, 1869", July 1871, page 316.

Their results – the only adulterants found being water, salt and sugar – do make some sense. While you might want to squeeze some extra profit out of each barrel of beer, you wouldn’t want to kill your customers. Because, while there were a few rogue brewers, most of the adulteration was performed by publicans.

To demonstrate just how much the beers had been watered down, I’ve assembled some details of beers as they left the brewery.

London beers 1867 - 1871
Year	Brewer	Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation
1871	Whitbread	P	Porter	1057.9	1018.3	5.24	68.42%
1867	Barclay Perkins	TT	Porter	1054.8	1016.6	5.06	69.70%
1871	Truman	Runner	Porter	1055.7	1012.2	5.75	78.11%
1871	Whitbread	SS	Stout	1075.1	1026.9	6.38	64.21%
1871	Whitbread	SSS	Stout	1094.2	1041.0	7.04	56.47%
1870	Truman	Running Stout	Stout	1069.8	1016.6	7.04	76.19%
1870	Truman	Double Stout	Stout	1081.7	1020.8	8.06	74.58%
1871	Whitbread	PA	Pale Ale	1062.6	1020.5	5.57	67.26%
1871	Whitbread	KKK	Stock Ale	1082.0	1028.3	7.11	65.54%
1870	Barclay Perkins	KK	Stock Ale	1084.5	1028.8	7.37	65.90%
1870	Barclay Perkins	KKK	Stock Ale	1095.3	1046.0	6.52	51.74%
1870	Barclay Perkins	KKKK	Stock Ale	1106.1	1037.7	9.05	64.49%
1871	Truman	KXX  Ale	Stock Ale	1075.9	1015.0	8.06	80.29%
1871	Truman	KXXX Ale	Stock Ale	1081.4	1018.0	8.39	77.89%
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/09/065 and LMA/4453/D/01/036.
Barclay Perkins brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers ACC/2305/1/572, ACC/2305/1/573/1 and ACC/2305/1/573
Truman brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers B/THB/C/152 and B/THB/C/072

Assuming the Porters were London-brewed every single example had been heavily watered. When it left the brewery, Porter was 5 - 5.5% ABV, while the strongest sample in the analyses was just 4.32% ABV.

The Stouts are trickier to check on as London brewers usually produced more than one, unlike Porter. However, the first three examples could only have been watered a little, given that they had an ABV of 7% and above. Sample 4 looks like undiluted Porter, while 7,9 and 10 are far too weak even for Porter. A Stout at 3% ABV is just taking the piss.

Bitter I would expect to be 5.5 – 6.5% ABV at this date. Which means samples 2, 8 and 9 could only have been lightly waters, if at all. That the weakest examples are still around 4.5% ABV indicates nothing too crazy has gone on.

With one exception, sample 3, the Old Ales don’t look that bad. The examples from brewing records are in the range 6.5 – 9% ABV. Pretty much exactly the same spread as the remaining 9 samples. Though whether or not they had been watered depends on exactly what type of Old Ale they were. If a KKK of KKKK was under 8% ABV, then something was wrong.

My conclusion: rampant adulteration but of a mostly harmless kind. And in the years that followed it would be reduced as local authorities started checking foodstuffs, including beer, to clamp down on adulteration, which was by no means just limited to beer.