3-011-651 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches from New York: entertainment in a lager beer saloon, 1864. 'Lager beer proper is composed of malt, hops, and water...It is lighter than the beer of England, and has a bitter-aromatic flavour...A stronger kind of this beverage, called bock beer, is much indulged in by some of the steady old topers who frequent the beer gardens and saloons. This is of a more potent brewage than the ordinary sort, and its specific gravity is one third greater, as it has so much more of the malt ingredient in its composition. Bock beer is of a darker colour than the common lager...It takes its name from the frolicsome spirit supposed to be imparted by it to its imbibers, whose gambols remind the observant Teuton of those of the bock, or goat, a figure of which animal, engaged in sportive dalliance with a beer cask, is usually to be seen as a sign in places where this brewage is on tap...Another kind, much used in summer by the Germans in America, and more particularly by the Prussians, is that known as 'weiss bier,' or white beer. This is a light, frothy, beverage, brewed from one part of barley malt and five parts of wheat...because of the immense head of froth it carries, is drunk out of tall glasses resembling lamp chimneys'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.