To Cure Ropy Beer.—Put a handful or two of flour, and the same quantity of hops, with a little powdered alum, into the beer and rummage it well.
To give Beer the appearance of Age.—Add a few handfuls of pickled cucumbers and Seville oranges, both chopped up. This is said to make malt liquor appear six months older than it really is.
How to make Mead.—The following is a good receipt for Mead:—On twenty pounds of honey pour five gallons of boiling water; boil, and remove the scum as it rises; add one ounce of best hops, and boil for ten minutes; then put the liquor into a tub to cool; when all but cold add a little yeast, spread upon a slice of toasted bread; let it stand in a warm room. When fermentation is set up, put the mixture into a cask, and fill up from time to time as the yeast runs out of the bunghole; when the fermentation is finished, bung it down, leaving a peg-hole which can afterwards be closed, and in less than a year it will be fit to bottle.
Stomach Bitters, equal to Hostetter's, for one-fourth its cost.—European Gentian root, 1½ ounce; orange peel, 2½ ounces; cinnamon, ¼ ounce; aniseseed, ½ ounce; coriander seed, ½ ounce; cardamon seed, ⅛ ounce; unground Peruvian bark, ½ ounce; gum kino, ¼ ounce; bruise all these articles, and put them into the best alcohol, 1 pint; let it stand a week and pour off the clear tincture: then boil the dregs a few minutes in 1 quart of water, strain, and press out all the strength; now dissolve loaf sugar, 1 pound, in the hot liquid, adding 3 quarts cold water, and mix with spirit tincture first poured off, or you can add these, and let it stand on the dregs if preferred.
Soda Syrup, with or without Fountains.—The common or more watery syrups are made by using loaf or crushed sugar, 8 pounds; pure water, 1 gallon, gum arabic, 2 ounces, mix in a brass or copper kettle; boil until the gum is dissolved, then skim and strain through white flannel, after which add tartaric acid, 5½ oz., dissolved in hot water; to flavor, use extract of lemon, orange, rose, pine-apple, peach, sarsaparilla, strawberry, etc., ½ ounce to each bottle, or to your taste.
Bead for Liquor.—The best bead is the orange-flower water bead, (oil of neroli,) 1 drop to each gallon of brandy. Another method:—To every 40 drops of sulpuric acid, add 60 drops purest sweet oil in a glass vessel; use immediately. This quantity is generally sufficient for 10 gallons spirit. Another:—take 1 ounce of the purest oil sweet almonds; 1 ounce of sulphuric acid; put them in a stone mortar, add, by degrees, 2 ounces white lump sugar, rubbing it well with the pestle till it becomes a paste; then add small quantities of spirits of wine till it comes into a liquid. This quantity is sufficient for 100 gallons. The first is strongly recommended as the best.
Coloring for Liquors.—Take 2 pounds crushed or lump sugar, put it into a kettle that will hold 4 to 6 quarts, with ½ tumbler of water. Boil it until it is black, then take it off and cool with water, stirring it as you put in the water.
Wax Putty for Leaky Casks, Bungs, etc.—Spirits turpentine, 2 pounds; tallow, 4 pounds; solid turpentine, 12 pounds. Melt the wax and solid turpentine together over a slow fire, then add the tallow. When melted, remove far from the fire, then stir the spirits turpentine, and let it cool.
Cement for the Mouths of Corked Bottles.—Melt together ¼ of a pound of rosin, a couple of ounces of beeswax. When it froths stir it with a tallow candle. As soon as it melts, dip the mouths of the corked bottles into it. This is an excellent thing to exclude the air from such things as are injured by being exposed to it.