THIS CITY HOTEL claims that for three months its beer slops have been coloured with washing blue — Mrs. M. Keighery, licensee, exhibiting one of the bags on Saturday. New regulations order that beer slops be coloured violet.

THIS PICTURE was taken in another city hotel on Saturday. It shows beer being siphoned into quart bottles in full view of the public.

Ounce of Dye Colours a million gallons

Hotel keepers unaware chemist sold drip beer colouring

One ounce of methyl violet, costing about 4 shillings, would colour 1,000,000 gallons of beer. Methyl violet is the dye with which hotelkeepers are now compelled to colour drip beer.

Methyl rosaline, as the dye is known to chemists, is used in England to colour methylated spirits to protect people from drinking it by mistake.

“In the small quantities needed to colour beer violet it would have no harmful effect on anyone who drank it,” said Mr. A. W. Dye, Sydney analyst, last night.

From Pharmacies

The gazetting on Friday night of the regulations requiring the dyeing of drip beer caught many publicans without methyl violet on Saturday. Many were unaware that it could be obtained from pharmacies. Washing blue was substituted in some hotels. In others, barmaids were instructed to throw away drip beer without waiting for it to accumulate.

– Sydney Daily Telegraph Monday 10 July 1939

Categories: Sydney Beer, Sydney hotels

Tags: beer slops, bottling beer slops, M Keighery