“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.

Sound strong beer is very nutritious and wholesome; indeed, it is generally considered more nourishing than wine.  It is a most useful drink to the weak, the lean, and the laborious, provided they are not very subject to flatulency, nor troubled with disorders of the breast.  If taken in moderate quantity, and of the best quality, it will often be found of great service to the invalid, in assisting to restore his strength, spirits, and flesh.  It should be drunk from the cask; bottled beer being more likely to disagree with the stomach, and to produce flatulency.

There is a general prejudice against beer in the case of the bilious and the sedentary, but it appears to me without sufficient foundation.  Bilious people are such as have weak stomachs and impaired digestion, and those who are sedentary are nearly, in these respects, always in a similar state.  Now, I have not observed that beer tends to weaken such stomachs, or to become ascescent, or otherwise to disagree with them; on the contrary, I believe, it will be found, in the majority of cases, that this beverage agrees much better than wine, since it is far less disposed to acescency, and better fitted to act as a stomachic, and, therefore, to invigorate both the digestive organs, and the constitution at large.  That it is very far superior for such persons to diluted spirit, in any form, I am fully persuaded.  Of course, I here speak of sound home-brewed strong beer, and of a moderate strength.  No man can answer for the effects of the stuff usually sold as beer; and we know strong ale is always difficult of digestion.