1919 Home made beverages

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Beverages

Alcoholic

cask with the strained lemon juice and chopped raisins. Stir the wine every day for a fortnight; then add the brandy, stop the cask down by degrees, and in a few weeks it will be fit to bottle. Sufficient to make 9 gal. of wine. The best time for making this wine is either in March or September. Gooseberry. — 1. — Firm green gooseberries, 20 lbs.; hot water, 3 gal.; loaf sugar, 15 lb.; cream of tartar, lj-jj oz. Top and tail the gooseberries, put them into an earthen- ware bowl or wooden tub, and pour over them the hot water. Let them soak for 24 hours, then bruise them well with a heavy wooden mallet or potato masher, and drain the juice through a fine hair sieve or jelly bag. Replace the skins in the vessel in which they were soaked, cover them with boiling water, stir and bruise well, so as to com- pletely extract the juice, then strain through the sieve or bag. Mix this preparation with the juice, add the sugar, and boiling water to increase the liquid to 5 gal. Replace in the bowl or tub, stir in the cream of tartar, cover with a heavy woolen cloth, and allow the vessel to stand in a mod- erately warm place for 2 days. Now strain the liquid into a small cask, cover the bunghole with a folded cloth until fermentation ceases — which may be known by the cessa- tion of the hissing noise — then bung closely, but provide the top of the cask with a venb peg. Make this wine in the beginning of June, before the berries ripen; let it remain undisturbed until December, then drain it off carefully into a clean eask. In March or April, or when the goose- berry bushes begin to blossom, the wine must be bottled and tightly corked. To insure its being clear and efferves- cing, the wine must be bottled at the right time, and preferably on a clear day. Grape Wine. — 1. — The grapes must be gathered and transported with as little injury as possible, and must be protected from dirt and injurious fermentation. Crush the well-matured fruit in a regular wine or cider mill, or gently mash it in any other receptacle by means of a wooden implement. It is absolutely necessary to use only 186