Take of good Jamaica ginger, 2½ oz.
Moist sugar, 3 lbs.
cream of tartar, 1 oz.
the juice and peel of 2 middling sized lemons,
brandy ½ pint,
good solid ale yeast, ¼ pint,
water, 3½ gallons.
This will produce 4½ dozen of excellent ginger beer, which will keep twelve months. Bruise the ginger and sugar, and boil them for 20 or 25 minutes in the water, slice the lemon and put it and the cream of tartar into a large pan; pour the boiling liquor upon them, stir it well round, and when milk-warm, add the yeast; cover it over, let it remain two or three days to work, skimming it frequently; then strain it through a jelly-bag into a cask, add the brandy, bung down very close, and at the end of a fortnight or three weeks, draw it off and bottle, and cork very tight; tie the cork down with twine or wire. If it does not work well at first, add a little more yeast, but be careful of adding too much, least it taste of it.
399. SPRUCE BEER.
Take, if white is intended, 6 lbs. of sugar; if brown, as much treacle, and a pot of spruce, and ten gallons of water.
This is also managed in the same way as ginger beer, except that it should be bottled as soon as it has done working.
400. BROWN SPRUCE BEER.
Pour 8 gallons of cold water into a barrel, and then boiling 8 gallons more, put that in also, add 12 lbs. of molasses, with about ½ lb. of the essence of spruce; and on its getting a little cooler, ½ a pint of good ale yeast. The whole being well stirred or rolled in the barrel, must be left with the bung out for two or three days; after which the liquor may be immediately bottled, well corked up, and packed in saw-dust or sand, when it will be ripe, and fit to drink in a fortnight.
Remember, that it should be drawn off into quart stone bottles, and wired.
401. WHITE SPRUCE BEER.
For a cask of six gallons, mix well together ¼ lb. of the purest essence of spruce, 7 lbs. of loaf-sugar made into a clarified syrup, and about 1½ gallons of hot water; and when sufficiently stirred and incorporated; put it into the cask, and fill up with cold water. Then add about a ¼ of a pint of good ale yeast, shake the cask well, and let it work for three or four days: after which, bung it up. In a few days it may be bottled off after the usual manner, and in a week or ten days it will be fit for use. If, on bunging it close, about ¼ of an oz. of isinglass, first dissolved in a little of the warmed liquor, or in cider, be stirred in, by way of fining, it will acquire a superior degree of clearness. In proportion to the coldness of the weather, the quantity of yeast should be increased. Some, instead of yeast, use ale or beer-grounds the first time of making, and afterwards the grounds of their former spruce beer. In warm weather, very little ferment is requisite.