Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/266

254 we say that the amount of glucose used by brewers is by no means small, and that the quantity is constantly increasing. I do not know any reason why its moderate use should injure the quality of the beer.

Bees eat glucose with the greatest avidity, or, rather, they act as funnels by which the glucose is poured into the comb. For it is quite true that honey made by bees which have free access to glucose differs scarcely at all from the glucose itself. But the quantity of honey which a bee will store away when fed on glucose is truly wonderful. This gluttony, however, rapidly undermines the apiarian constitution, and the bee rarely lives to enjoy the fruits of its apparent good fortune. In commercial honey, which is entirely free from bee mediation, the comb is made of paraffine, and filled with pure glucose by appropriate machinery. This honey, for whiteness and beauty, rivals the celebrated real white-clover honey of Vermont, but can be sold at an immense profit at one half the price.

All soft candies, waxes, and taffies, and a large proportion of stick candies and caramels, are made of glucose. Very often a little cane sugar is mixed with the glucose, in order to give a sweeter taste to the candies, but the amount of this is made as small as possible. As has been stated above, the glucose which is used in confections is evaporated nearer to dryness than that which is used for sirups. In such glucoses I have found the percentage of water to be as low as 6·37. Such a product is almost thick enough for "taffy" without any further concentration.

A very large percentage of all the glucose made is used for the manufacture of table-sirups. The process of manufacture is a very simple one:

The glucose is mixed with some kind of cane-sugar sirup until the tint reaches a certain standard. The amount of cane-sugar sirup required varies from three to ten per cent., according to circumstances. These sirups are graded A, B, C, etc., the tint growing deeper with each succeeding letter.

When these sirups are sent into the shops, they are sold to consumers under such altisonant names as "Maple Drip," "Bon Ton," "Upper Ten," "Magnolia," "Extra Choice," "Golden Drip," "White Loaf Drip," etc. Dealers tell me that these sirups, by their cheapness and excellence, have driven all the others out of the market. So much is this the case that it is no longer proper to call glucose the "coming sirup." It is the sirup which has already come.

In addition to the uses above mentioned, small quantities of glucose are used by vinegar-makers, tobacconists, wine-makers, distillers, mucilage-makers, and perhaps for some other purposes.

Grape-sugar is also used for many of the purposes enumerated above, but chiefly for the adulteration of other sugars. When it is reduced to fine powder, it can be mixed with cane-sugar in any proportions, without altering its appearance. Since the grape-sugar costs less than