Take of good cider 4 gallons; of the juice of red beet, 2 quarts; logwood, 4 oz.; rhatany root brewed, ½ a pound; first infuse the logwood and rhatany root in brandy and a gallon of cider for a week; then strain off the liquor, and mix the other ingredients; keep in a cask for a month, when it will be fit to bottle. In the _Mechanics’ Magazine_ is given the chemical analysis of a bottle of cheap _Port_:-- Spirits of wine, 3 oz.; cider, 14 oz.; sugar, 1½ oz.; alum, 2 scruples; tartaric acid, 1 scruple; strong decoction of logwood, 4 oz. Mr. Cyrus Redding, in his work on _Modern Wines_, lets us into the secrets of cheap _Sherry_:--It ‘is mingled with Cape wine and cheap brandy, the washings of brandy casks, sugar candy, bitter almonds, &c. The colour, if too great, is taken out by the addition of a small quantity of lamb’s blood; it is then passed off for best sherry.’ Professor Mulder, in his _Chemistry of Wine_, tells that during the process of wine-clearing such aids as albumen, blood, cream, gypsum, marble, nutgalls, lime, salt, gum-arabic, sulphuric acid, &c., are furnished. The scientific writer Dunovan, in his _Domestic Economy_, makes us acquainted with a few of the drugs with which beer is _doctored_. It is absolutely frightful to contemplate the list of poisons and drugs with which malt liquors have been (as it is technically and descriptively called) _doctored_. Opium, henbane, cocculus indicus, and Bohemian rosemary, which is said to produce a quick and raving intoxication, supplied the place of alcohol; aloes, quassia, gentian, sweet-scented flag, wormwood, horehound, and bitter oranges, fulfilled the duties of hops; liquorice, treacle, and mucilage of flax seed, stood for attenuated malt sugar. Capsicum, ginger, and cinnamon, or rather cassia-buds, afforded to the exhausted drink the pungency of carbonic acid. Burnt flour, sugar, or treacle, communicated a peculiar taste, which porter-drinkers generally fancy. Preparations of fish, assisted, in cases of obstinacy, with oil of vitriol, procured transparency. Besides these, the brewer had to supply himself with lime, potash, salt, and a variety of other substances, which are of no other use, than in serving the office of more valuable materials, and defrauding the customer. But the subject is, like the frauds practised, without a limit; references can only be subjoined.[196]