A common beverage is sometimes made, by simply boiling the refuse honey-combs in water after extracting from them as much of the honey as will run; this liquor will not require tartar or yeast: it should be tunned as soon as cool, bunged down in three or four days, and drank in a few weeks. In some parts of Wales the refuse combs are brewed with malt, spices, &c. and the produce is called Braggot, a name derived from the old British words brag and gots, the former signifying malt, the latter honey-comb.
A knowledge of the principles of fermentation will enable the wine-maker to regulate its process. Thus if a dry wine be desired, and fermentation be suspended, it may be renewed by a restoration of the separated leaven or the addition of fresh; or by agitation and a remixture of the lees. It is upon the latter principle, called “feeding on the lees,” that some foreign wines are improved by long voyages; but this treatment, so serviceable to Madeira and other Spanish wines, and also to some of the French wines, would destroy Burgundy. If there be an excess of fermentation the scientific operator will regulate, check or suspend it, by skimming, racking, fining. If skimming and racking do not succeed, recourse must be had to fining, which may be effected by isinglass, in the proportion of about an ounce to 100 gallons. The isinglass must be beaten, for a few days, with a whisk in a small quantity of the wine, till completely attenuated. This solution must then be well stirred into the cask of wine, which in about a week will become fine and fit for being racked off. This fining is accomplished by the union of the isinglass with what is called the tannin of the wine. Fining may also be effected by stumming, i. e. by burning in a close vessel containing a small part of the wine a brimstone rag, at the rate of a dram of sulphur to thirty gallons; and when consumed, rolling the cask about for a quarter of an hour, that the wine may absorb as much as possible of the sulphuric acid gas. This being done, the cask is to be filled up with the remainder of the wine, and bunged down. In this process the sulphuric acid or its oxygen unites with the extractive matter or soluble leaven, which being thereby rendered insoluble is precipitated to the bottom, as I before observed. If wines be perfectly fermented, they do not require the addition of any brandy, as a sufficiency of spirit is generated during the process.
The best temperature for carrying on fermentation is about 54° Fahrenheit. Its perfection depends in some degree upon the volume of the liquor; the larger the quantity, the longer the fermentation will continue, and the stronger and pleasanter will be the wine. There are however exceptions to this rule. The peculiar excellence of champagne would be destroyed, if its fermentation were conducted upon a large scale: it may be made successfully in a gallon measure. This wine is so managed by the makers as to ferment after bottling.
Dry wines and fine wines are much more durable than any others; and those that would perish in cask, may be preserved many years by bottling.
These hints will, I hope, enable the makers of home-made wines to conduct the process scientifically, and to secure generally a successful issue. Cookery books and good housewives abound in receipts for wine-making, which are very often fanciful and absurd, recommending the introduction of articles which, in their very natures, counteract the production of good wine. Hence we are sometimes presented with such miserable mawkish stuff, as disgraces the name of wine, being only rendered tolerable by the brandy which has been added to it, and which in some degree covers the crudeness and insipidity of the compound, and moderates its hostility to the peace of our stomachs.
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