To Detect Adulterated Wine.
Heat equal parts of oyster-shells and sulphur together, and keep them in a white heat for fifteen minutes, and when cold, mix them with an equal quantity of cream of tartar; put this mixture into a strong bottle with common water to boil for one hour, and then decant into ounce phials, and add 20 drops of muriatic acid to each; this liquor precipitates the least quantity of lead, copper, &c. from wines in a very sensible black precipitate.
To Detect Alum in Wine.
Wine merchants add alum to red wine, to communicate to it a rough taste and deeper colour; but this mixture produces on the system the most serious effects. For the discovery of the fraud in question, adopt the following means:—The wine is to be discoloured by means of a concentrated solution of chlorine; the mixture is to be evaporated until reduced to nearly the fourth of its original volume; the liquor is to be filtered; it then possesses the following properties when it contains alum:—1st. It has a sweetish astringent taste; 2d. it furnishes a white precipitate (sulphate of barytes) with nitrate of barytes, insoluble in water and in nitric acid; 3d. caustic potass rise to a yellowish white precipitate of alumine, soluble in an excess of potass; 4th. the sub-carbonate of soda produces a yellowish white precipitate (sub-carbonate of alumine) decomposable by fire into carbonic acid gas, alumine, easily recognisable by its characters.
TO BOTTLE BEER.
When the briskness of small liquors in the cask fails, and they become vapid and dead, which they generally do soon after they are tilted, let them be bottled.
TO TRY THE GOODNESS OF SPIRITS.
Set fire to some in a spoon; if good it will burn brightly away, without leaving any moisture in the spoon.
TO COOL LIQUORS IN HOT WEATHER.
Dip a cloth in cold water and wrap it two or three times round the bottle and place it in the sun. Repeat this once or twice.