Cox, in his _History of Dorsetshire_ (1700), states that “since by the French wars the coming of French wine is prohibited, the people here have learned to brew the finest malt liquors in the kingdom, so delicately clean and well tasted that the best judges . . . . prefer it to the ales most in vogue, as Hull, Derby, Burton, &c.” Great quantities of Dorchester beer were consumed in London during the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth centuries, but from that time the trade with London, for some reason—probably the expense of transit—gradually fell away. The excellence of the Dorset beer depended in a great measure upon the fact that the water of the neighbourhood possessed peculiarly good qualities for brewing purposes, and, that advantage being of a permanent character, there seems to be no reason why the Dorchester ales of the present day should not regain throughout the country the position they had at the beginning of last century. In the south and south-western portions of England they are held in very high esteem.
Barnstaple was famous for its ales in the middle of the last century; a writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of Jan., 1753, says that they are as good as Derby ales, though not quite so famous.
Mum, a popular drink early in the last century, was a strong ale brewed chiefly from wheat-malt with the addition of various aromatic herbs. Mum-houses were in existence in 1664, for Mr. Samuel Pepys records that on a certain occasion he went “with Mr. Norbury near hand to the Fleece, a mum-house in Leadenhall, and there drank _mum_, and by-and-by broke up.” A receipt of the date 1682, describes the brewing of mum as follows:— { 173}
“To make a vessel of sixty-three gallons, we are instructed that, the water must be first boiled to the consumption of a third part, then let it be brewed according to art with seven bushels of wheat-malt, one bushel of oat-malt, and one bushel of ground beans. When the mixture begins to work, the following ingredients are to be added: three pounds of the inner rind of the fir; one pound each of the tops of the fir and the birch; three handfuls of _Carduus Benedictus_, dried; two handfuls of flowers of _Rosa solis_; of burnet, betony, marjoram, avens, pennyroyal, flowers of elder, and wild thyme, one handful and a half each; three ounces of bruised seeds of cardamum; and one ounce of bruised bayberries. Subsequently ten new-laid eggs, not cracked or broken, are to be put into the hogshead, which is then to be stopped close, and not tapped for two years, a sea voyage greatly improving the drink.”