1919 Home made beverages

Wines and Wine Making

2. — The pokeberry (the dark berries from the plant growing all over the United States) has a very dark red color. 3. — Whortleberry, huckleberry, elderberry, blackberry and mulberry. 4. — Cochineal gives a fine red color by boiling finely ground cochineal with cream of tartar. 5. — Brazil wood, ganders wood and logwood. These woods are boiled in water and the decoctions yield shades of color from red to blue. 6. — Orchil produces a beautiful purple. 7. — Red beets and carrots produce likewise a good color. 8. — Indigo solution, neutralized by potash, produces a. fine blue. 9. — Annatto and extract of safflower produce a beauti- ful yellow. 10. — Red cabbage produces a beautiful bluish red. 11. — Turmeric is the most common color for yellow, as the spirit extracts all color immediately, as also quer- citron bark. 12. — Garacine (extract of madder) produces various shades of red. 13. — Tincture of saffron (Spanish saffron) for yellow. 14. — Blue vitriol, or solution of indigo, produces blue. 15. — Burnt sugar produces a fine and permanent brown color for wines. It is best to boil down common sugar or loaf sugar nearly to dryness. It is then dissolved in hot water sufficient to make the consistency of syrup, and for the purpose of neutralizing it and making it a more permanent color, add to each gal. of sugar color about 1 oz. liquid ammonia. 16. — Green color for absinthe is prepared from a solu- tion of extract of indigo and tumeric, dissolved in spirits. 17. — Violet is obtained by a solution of extract of log- wood and alum. 18. — Alkanet root produces a fine blue red by macerat- ing in alcohol. 165