Take sixteen quarts of water, boil it, add one pound of bruised ginger, infuse it in the water for forty-eight hours, placed in a cask in some warm situation; after which time strain off this liquor, add to it eight pounds of lump sugar, seven quarts of brandy, the juice of twelve lemons, and the rinds of as many Seville oranges; cut them, steep the fruit, and the rinds of the oranges, for twelve hours in the brandy, strain your brandy, add it to your other ingredients, bung up your cask, and in three or four weeks it will be fine; if it should not, a little dissolved isinglass will soon make it so.
Take five gallons of currant juice, and put it into a ten gallon cask, with twenty pounds of Havanna, or lump sugar, fill the cask with water, let it ferment, with the bung out, for some days; as it wastes fill up with water; when done working, bung down; and in two or three months after it will be fit for use: two quarts of French brandy added, after the fermentation ceases, would improve the liquor, and communicate to it a preserving quality. Wine may be made from strawberries, raspberries, and cherries in the same way.
[ Yest, how prepared, so as to preserve sweet and good in any climate. ]
This operation, I apprehend, however simple it may appear, will have very important consequences, whether we consider it as a medicine (and in putrid fevers there is, perhaps, no better known) or a ferment. It will be well worth the attention of the physician, the brewer, the distiller, the merchant, and the housekeeper, whether resident in the temperate, or in the torrid zone.
Mr. Felton Mathew, merchant in London, obtained a patent for the above-mentioned object, which may be found in the Repertory of Arts, vol. V. page 73. Mr. Mathew used a press with a lever, the bottom made with stout deal or oak timber, fit for the purpose, raised with strong feet a convenient distance from the ground, so as to admit the beer to run off into whatever is prepared to receive it; into the back of it is let a strong piece of timber, or any other fit material, to secure one end of the lever, the top of which should work on an iron bolt or pin; when the lever is thus prepared, get your yest into hair-cloth bags, or, if not conveniently had, into coarse canvas bags; when filled, tie them securely at the mouth, and place one bag at a time in a trough of a proper size with a false bottom full of holes, on this bottom should be placed an oblong perforated shape, about the form of a brick mould; in this oblong shape or box, without either bottom or top, is placed the bag containing the yest, on which the press is let down, and gradually forced, as the beer exudes, or gradually runs off; when no more liquid runs from the shape, the press is taken off, and the bag opened, its contents taken out, which will crumble to pieces; in this state it should be thinly spread on canvass, previously stretched in frames, which will permit the heated air of the kiln to pass through it in all directions, and thus gradually finish the process to perfect dryness, which will be completely effected by ninety degrees of heat: at the commencement of the drying, it would be proper to pass the edge of a board over each frame, in order to reduce the lumps of yest, and thereby make them as small as possible. When completely dry, put it into tight casks or bottles so as to exclude air and moisture: thus secured, it will preserve good as long as wanted in any climate, and be found a valuable article of domestic economy, as well as medicine. When to be used, the necessary quantity should be dissolved in a little warm water, at the temperature of from eighty to ninety degrees of heat, with the addition of a proportionate quantity of sugar; the addition of sugar is only recommended when used to raise bread, but not when given as medicine; in the opinions of several intelligent men, this is considered the simplest and most effectual method of preserving yest, and, as such, is hereby strongly recommended.