malt liquor.

"Your wine-tippling, dram-sipping fellows retreat,
But your beer-drinking Britons can never be beat."

DR. ARNE.


Good home-brewed beer has been styled by some _vinum Britannicum_,
and by others liquid bread. There can be no doubt of its highly
nutritive and wholesome qualities, and it is much to be regretted, that
so few families in this kingdom now ever brew their own beer, but are
content to put up with the half-fermented, adulterated wash found in
public-houses, or with the no less adulterated and impure drink called
porter.

Malt liquors are divided into small beer, strong beer, ale, and porter.
Small beer is best calculated for common use, being less heating and
stimulating than other malt liquors. When used soft and mild, after
having been thoroughly fermented and purified, it forms an excellent
diluent with food, more especially at dinner. Sydenham was in the habit
of using it in this manner, both at dinner and supper, and he justly
considered its being well hopped a great advantage. In general it is,
without doubt, the best drink which can be taken at dinner, by persons
in the middle and higher ranks of society, who are in the habit of
drinking wine after that meal. As it abounds with carbonic acid gas, or
fixed air, it is the most useful diluent for labourers, because it cools
the body, abates thirst, and, at the same time, stimulates very
moderately the animal powers. Small beer, when stale and hard, is
unwholesome to all persons.