To enforce all these new laws and ordinances, promulgated for the sole purpose of securing as nearly as possible the full amount of taxes due the exchequer, Stuyvesant appointed inspectors, gaugers and revenue supervisors. Nevertheless, either on account of his natural distrustfulness or because he wished to set a good example to his officers, he frequently visited and inspected the taverns himself to make sure that his laws were obeyed. Money still being scarce, he increased the excise again and again, without permitting the brewers to raise the price of their product, until the beer-drinkers loudly complained that with every increase of tax, the brewers made their beer “thinner and poorer.” These complaints finally induced him to adjust the prices of beer in accordance with the increased cost of production, and to prescribe minutely the quality of the article. It may interest the reader to learn that beer, in those days, was made either of malted barley, wheat or oats, and that whenever there was a scarcity of any of these cereals, the lawmakers usually forbade the malting of it. Here, as in the New England colonies, the law provided for three grades of beer: the first grade requiring six bushels of malt for every hogshead; the second, four bushels; the third, two bushels. Complaints about the quality of beer were sometimes investigated by a court composed of the schepens and burgomasters. In 1655, when one of the burgomasters and two of the schepens were brewers, this court, being engaged in the consideration of such a complaint, adjourned and personally sampled the beer in dispute; whereupon they gave judgment in accordance with their own evidence. [Sidenote: CONFLICT WITH THE PATROON] Before the administration of Stuyvesant, the Patroons regulated the liquor traffic in their own way. In Rensselaerwyck, the condition of affairs now became somewhat muddled, as will presently be shown, in consequence of the conflict of authority between the Patroon and the representatives of the Director of the Colony. The manner in which the Patroon first regulated the traffic was simple enough. As we have already stated, he established a brewery with the exclusive privilege of supplying all licensed retailers with beer; but he permitted private individuals to brew whatever beer they needed for their own families. Subsequently, however, other brewers were licensed. In the dorp (village) of Beverwyck—the present Albany—which had sprung up in the immediate neighborhood of Fort Orange, and, in fact, throughout the colony, permission to build houses, establish stores, factories, shops, beer-houses, etc., had to be obtained from the Commissaries to whom the government was entrusted. This permission had to be paid for in some instances, while in others it was given gratuitously.