Dissolve ½ lb. hartshorn shavings in cider or rhenish wine; this is sufficient for a hogshead.—Or: to 2 table-spoonsful boiled rice, add ½ oz. burnt alum in powder: mix with a pint, or more, of the wine, stir it into the cask, with a stout stick, but do not agitate the lees.—Or: dissolve ½ oz. isinglass, in a pint or more of the wine, mix with it ½ oz. of chalk in powder, and put it into the cask: stir the wine, but not the lees.
British Sherry, or Malt Wine.
Take 12 quarts of the best sweet wort, from pale malt, let it cool and put it into a 10 gallon cask. Take as much water as will be required to fill up the cask, put it on the fire, with 22 lbs. of the best lump sugar, stir from time to time, and let it boil gently about a quarter of an hour, taking off the scum as it rises. Take it off the fire, let it cool, pour it into the cask, and put in a little good yeast. It may, perhaps, continue to ferment two or three weeks; when this has ceased, put in 3 lbs. raisins, chopped fine; these may cause fresh fermentation, which must be allowed to subside; then put in the rinds of 4 Seville oranges, and their juice, also a quart of good brandy; at the end of three or four days, if a fresh fermentation have not taken place, put the bung in tight. Keep it a year in the cask, then bottle it; the longer it is kept the better.—Or: stir 42 lbs. good moist sugar into 14 gallons of water, till it is dissolved, then boil it twenty minutes; let it cool in a tub, then put in 16 lbs. good Malaga raisins, picked and chopped; when it is quite cold pour in 2 gallons of strong beer ready to be tunned, and let it stand eight days; then taking out the raisins, put it into a 16 gallon cask, with 2 quarts of the best brandy, 1 lb. bitter almonds blanched, and 2 oz. isinglass. Bottle it in a year.
British Madeira.
Boil 30 lbs. moist sugar in 10 gallons of water, half an hour, and scum well. Let it cool, and to every gallon put 1 quart of ale, out of the vat; let this work, in a tub, a day or two; then put it in the cask, with 1 lb. sugar candy, 6 lbs. raisins, 1 quart of brandy, and 2 oz. isinglass. When it has ceased to ferment, bung it tight, for a year.
English Frontiniac.
Boil 11 lbs. lump sugar in 4 gallons of water, half an hour; when only milk warm, put it to nearly a peck of elder flowers, picked clear from the stalks, the juice and peel of 4 large lemons, cut very thin, 3 lbs. stoned raisins, and 2 or 3 spoonsful yeast: stir often, for four or five days. When quite done working, bung it tight, and bottle it in a week.
Red Currant Wine.
To 28 lbs. of moist sugar, allow 4 gallons of water, pour it over the sugar, and stir it well. Have a sieve of currants (which usually produces between 10 and 11 quarts of juice), squeeze the fruit with the hand, to break the currants, and as you do so, put the crushed fruit into a horse-hair sieve, press it, and when no more will run through the sieve, wring the fruit in a coarse cloth. Pour the juice on the sugar and water, mix it, and then pour it all into a 9 gallon cask, and fill it with water, if the barrel should not be full.—The cask should be filled up with water every day, while the wine ferments, and be bunged up tight, when it ceases. This is a cheap and simple method of making currant wine.—Or: put a bushel of red, and a peck of white currants, into a tub or pan, squeeze well; strain them through a sieve upon 28 lbs. of powdered sugar; when the sugar is dissolved put in some water in the proportion of 1½ gallon to 1 gallon of juice, pour it all into the barrel, add 3 or 4 pints of raspberries, and a little brandy.
Raisin Wine.