1885 New Guide Hotel Bar Restaurant

HOME MADE WINES.

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Leave the bung out of the barrel until the sissing noise has done. Then if you have not had the fortitude to crack the stones, through fear of dyeing your fingers, add i an oz. of almond essence, stir it up well in the wine, then add your finings and bung down. Damson wine will require to stand 8 to 10 months before it is mellow enough for use. Bilberry Wine. The bilberry, whortleberry, huckleberry, and blueberry, are all pretty much the same thing. In the autumn you can buy as many hampers as you like at Covent garden. They are splendid for colouring faded wines, &c. They make a good wine of themselves, far superior in my idea to that glory of an Englishman's hearth mulled elderberry,'* on a winter's night. From the Yorkshire and Scotch heaths, you can get them far cheaper than. elderberries, and however medicinally good elderberries may be, still they have a sickly taste from which the bilberry is free. Whilst on the one hand, the elderberry is easily detected in the adulteration of port and other red wines ; the presence of the bilberry is not noticed, and is only traceable by its action on litmus paper, and the applications of certain chemicals. To make bilberry wine, take 2 gallons of berries and 4 gallons of water. Boil the water with 14 lbs. of sugar^ and 3 lbs. of fine treacle, skim it well, and add 1 pint of raw lime juice. Mash the berries in the ferment- ing tub, pour the boiling liquor on ; ferment with yeast When the fermentation ceases, take off the head ; strain the liquor and the fruit. Put it into a clean brandy cask ; or if it is a stock cask see that it is perfectly clean and free from mustiness. (If you have any doubt as to the cleanliness of the cask, make a strong solution of soda and water. Soda is very searching. The quantity I use for a foul cask is 7 lbs. to 9 gallons. Fill the barrel and let it stand 24 hours.