Twenty-six quarts of water, eighteen pounds of white Lisbon sugar, six ounces of bruised ginger, the peel of six lemons pared very thin: boil half an hour, and let it stand till no more than blood warm. Put it in your cask, with the juice of six lemons, five spoonfuls of yest, and three pounds of raisins. Stir it six or seven times with a stick through the bung-hole, and put in half an ounce of isinglass and a pint of good brandy. Close the bung, and in about six weeks it will be fit for bottle. Let it stand about six months before you drink it. If you like, it may be drawn from the cask, and it will be fit for use in that way in about two months.
Ginger Wine. No. 3.
To ten gallons of water put eight pounds of loaf-sugar and three ounces of bruised ginger; boil all together for one hour, taking the scum off as it rises; then put it into a pan to cool. When it is cold, put it into a cask, with the rind and juice of ten lemons, one bottle of good brandy, and half a spoonful of yest. Bung it up for a fortnight: then bottle it off, and in three weeks it will be fit to drink. The lemons must be pared very thin, and no part of the white must, on any account, be put in the cask.
Ginger Wine. No. 4.
To every gallon of water put one pound and a half of brown sugar and one ounce of bruised ginger, and to each gallon the white of an egg well beaten. Stir all together, and boil it half an hour; skim it well while any thing rises, and, when milk-warm, stir in a little yest. When cold, to every five gallons, put two sliced lemons. Bottle it in nine days; and it will be fit to drink in a week.
Gooseberry Wine. No. 1.
To every pound of white amber gooseberries, when heads and tails are picked off and well bruised in a mortar, add a quart of spring water, which must be previously boiled. Let it stand till it is cold before it is put to the fruit. Let them steep three days, stirring them twice a day; strain and press them through a sieve into a barrel, and to every gallon of liquor put three pounds of loaf-sugar, and to every five gallons a bottle of brandy. Hang a small bag of isinglass in the barrel; bung it close, and, in six months, if the sweetness is sufficiently gone off, bottle it, and rosin the corks well over the top. The fruit must be fall grown, but quite green.
Gooseberry Wine. No. 2.
To three quarts of full grown gooseberries well crushed put one gallon of water well stirred together for a day or two. Then strain and squeeze the pulp, and put the liquor immediately into the barrel, with three pounds and a half of common loaf-sugar; stir it every day until the fermentation ceases. Reserve two or three gallons of the liquor to fill up the barrel, as it overflows through the fermentation. Put a bottle of brandy into the cask, to season it, before the wine; this quantity will be sufficient for nine or ten gallons. Be careful to let the fermentation cease, before you bung down the barrel.
The plain white gooseberries, taken when not too ripe, but rather the contrary, are the best for this purpose.