6 THE ANALYST. DOES NEUTRAL OR 8lJBaACETATE OF LEAD PRECIPITATE HOP- BITTERS ? BY DR. W. JOHNSTONE. (Recut? at Heeting, November, 1887.) GENTLEMEN, It will be in your recollection that; our worthy President read a paper before the Society in May last, entitled 6 g An Improved method of Detecting Quassia and certain other Hop-substitutes in Beer,” wherein the following sentence appeared : “ Seeing that the bitter principles of hops are entirely precipitated by neutral acetate of lead, the presence of some hop-substitute is absolutely certain if the chloroform or ether residue has a marked bitter taste.” I n the interesting discussion following the mading of thatTHE ANALYST. h paper, Mr. Adams said he had no difficidty in distinguishing between a bitter of hops and the substitute used for it, but he did not think there was any possibility of distinguish- ing between the individual bitters, and one could only positively say there was another bitter present besides that of hops.Dr. Muter, in following Mr. Adams, remarked as follows: ‘ I Now came a difficulty which shook his faith as an analyst as regarded hop bitters. €10 had always believed in the process, from practising upon beers with various added bitters, until some time ago he got a beer which he was privately assured by the maker to have no bitter other than hops. This sample he put through the process, and he got a bitter out of that beer with chloroform, after using lead. Me worked on a fairly large quantity, but the process here showed bitters other than hop, although he mas assured that the sample represented as pure a beer as could possibly be obtained.” I, Mr.President, have experienced and obtained the same results as Dr. Muter, and have now no hesitation in stating that the use of neutral or sub-acetate of lead in precipitating hop bitters is no use whatever, and for the following reasons : in that I received a sample of beer from my friend, Mr. Quartermain, who assured me that it was brewed by himself, and from nothing but pure malt and hops. Now this sample of beer when put through the process gave a decided bitter. The result aroused my suspicions, and I wrote to my friend reporting the result, when he kindly replied, assuring me again that the beer was as he represented, and that there were four different samples of hops used in the brew, three of which he sent me, at the same time stating that he was very sorry he could not send the fourth sample, as they had been entirely used up a t that particular brewing, a circumstance I also regretted ; however, I submitted the three samples I received to the process and found all of them give a distinct bitter, so under these circumstances tho bitter found in the beer could not be wholly derived from the missing sample, and therefore does not affect the finding of the bitter in this particular sample of beer.The idea now occurred to me, could the three samples of hops examined have been treated in any way with an infusion of Quassia or other foreign bitter ; so to decide this question, if possible, I obtained from Mr. Spriggs, who resides at Maidstone (brother of one of my assistants), a sample of this year’s hops, plucked by himself and forwarded direct to me in the condition in which they were picked, and upon arrival they were carefully wind-dried, and then submitted to the process.The results obtained being a decided and distinct bitter. This morning I received a sample of hops from our President, who, in the letter that accompanied the sample, informed me that he could obtain no bitter from them after having submitted them to the process. I, fortu- nately, have been able‘also to pass them through the mill, but with quite a different result. Here, gentlemen, is the bitter extracted for you to taste. I shall not detain you any longer, gentlemen, but conclude by stating that the process described by our President in his paper, read before the Society and published in the June number of THE ANALYST, is quite misleading, and that the use of neutral or sub-acetate of lead, used in the manner as therein described, does not precipitate the natural bitter belonging to hops. ( Cone ZICS ion of the ,Socie~yl’s I’mxwZin gs. ) One fact more, and I am finished.