Adulteration is any situation where a person sells something of commercial value that is subject to some type of fraud, and beer is no exception. We can expect with fair certainty that adulteration of beer reaches back well into antiquity. For many centuries, however, most Europeans may have had little expectation as to what beer should be. Although the average modern beer drinker may see beer as a grain-based drink flavored only with hops, many flavorings and ingredients beside these were once common. Before hops became standard in Europe and then the UK, a spice and herb blend called gruit was used to bitter beer.
The idea of adulteration is, therefore, somewhat related to intentional fraud. In medieval England, an official bestowed with the title “ale-conner” was empowered by towns and great manors to prevent and punish the adulteration of beer.
In the early days, many adulterations were relatively harmless, even if they were fraudulent. Any substance containing spicy heat, horseradish, for example, could be used to simulate the warming effects of alcohol. When other spices became available, brewers used them—chilies, black pepper, and ginger were all used to create an illusion of strength. The consumer, convinced that he was getting a strong beer, could be induced to pay more for it. Aged beers were also considered valuable, and a dash of vinegar in a young beer could suffice to give it the slightly acetic character that many beer drinkers once prized in beers that had been “vatted.” Both the European age of exploration and the commercialization of the beer industry brought more dangerous frauds to beer.
By the mid 1800s, Cocculus indicus, a berry from India containing the alkaline poison picrotoxin, was widely used in British porter, where it gave a powerful narcotic effect. The minutes of a House of Commons committee meeting indicate some of the substances seized from British breweries’ stores: “cocculus extract, coloring, honey, hartshorn shavings, Spanish juice, orange powder, ginger, grains of paradise, quassia, liquorice, caraway seeds, copperas (iron sulfate, used to create foam), capiscum, and ‘mixed drugs.’ ” By
Things were somewhat better in Germany, but even German beers didn’t escape slight of hand. The German journal Archiv der Pharmazie divided “the adulteration of beer into two classes: the use of correctives to restore a spoiled beer, and the use of substitutes for malt and hops. Probably most of the evils arise from a too sparing use of the proper materials to furnish a strong and therefore durable beer. The beer, weak in alcohol and extract, grows sour, and the acid is neutralized with alkalies and chalk.”
German brewers were also discovered to have used absinthe, aloe, and Heracleum spondyllium (cow parsnip) as hop substitutes and glycerin for flavor and body. And although Germany had long been associated with all-malt beer, German brewers constantly experimented with other grains, publishing results in scientific journals. In
Over the past 100 years, various chemicals have been used as preservatives in beers. These have ranged from largely harmless levels of sulfites, still sometimes used in Europe, to formaldehyde, although the latter was never so widespread as rumored. Today, the European Union tightly regulates beer ingredients, as does the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States, and the idea of adulteration becomes harder and harder to fathom. The most popular mass-market beers in the world use corn and rice to replace a fraction of the malt in the mash. Colonial Americans used everything from pumpkins to peapods in beer, and today’s American craft beers might be flavored with lemongrass, whole chilies, cacao beans, or reincarnated gruit. The sugars that are anathema to the Bavarian brewer are an important ingredient in the finest Belgian beers. Once eschewed by the craft brewer, hop oils and extracts are becoming more common in India pale ales, where the addition of gypsum has long been expected. Flavored malt beverages are common (