729. General Receipt for Making Wine from Dry Saccharine Fruit

729.    General Receipt for Making Wine from Dry Saccharine Fruit. I. Dry fruit, 41/2 pounds; soft water, 1 gallon; cream of tartar (dissolved), 1 pound; brandy, 11/2 to 2 per cent., weak.

II.  As the last, but using 51/2 pounds dried fruit. A superior family wine.

III.  As the last, 71/2 pounds fruit, and brandy 3 per cent. A strong wine. Should the dried fruit employed be at all deficient in saccharine matter, 1 to 3 pounds may be omitted, and half that quantity of sugar, or two thirds of raisins, added. In the above manner may be made raisin wine, fig wine, etc..

730. Imitation Champagne

730.    Imitation Champagne. Stoned raisins, 7 pounds; loaf sugar, 21 pounds; water, 9 gallons; crystallized tartaric acid, 1 ounce; honey, 1/2 pound; ferment with sweet yeast 1 pound or less ; skim frequently, and when the fermentation is nearly over, add coarse-powdered orris root, 1 drachm, and eau de fleurs d'orange, 3 ounces; lemon juice, 1/4 pint. Rack it, bung close, and in 3 months fine it down with isinglass, 1/2 ounce; in 1 month more, if not sparkling, again fine it down, and in 2 weeks bottle it, observing to put a piece of double-refined sugar, the size of a pea, into each bottle. The bottles should be wired, and the corks covered with tin foil.

731. To Make Blackberry Wine

731.    To Make Blackberry Wine. To make 10 gallons of this cheap and excellent wine, press the juice out of sufficient fresh ripe blackberries to make 41/8 gallons; wash the pomace in 41/8 gallons soft spring water, and thoroughly dissolve in it 6 pounds white sugar to each gallon of water (brown sugar will do for an inferior wine); strain the juice into this syrup, and mix them. Fill a cask with it perfectly full, and lay a cloth loosely over the bung-hole, placing the cask where it will be perfectly undisturbed. In two or three days fermentation will commence, and the impurities run over at the bung. Look at it every day, and if it does not run over, with some of the mixture which you have reserved in another vessel fill it up to the bung. In about three weeks, fermentation will have ceased, and the wine be still; fill it again, drive in the bung tight, nail a tin over it, and let it remain undisturbed until the following March. Then draw it off, without shaking the cask, put it into bottles, cork tightly and seal over. Some persons add spirit to the wine, but instead of doing good, it is only an injury. The more carefully the juice is strained, the better the quality of the sugar, and the more scrupulously clean the utensils and casks, the purer and better will be the wine.

732. Cider "Wine

732. Cider "Wine. Let the new cider from sour apples (ripe, sound fruit preferred), ferment from 1 to 3 weeks, as the weather is warm or cool. "When it has attained to a lively fermentation, add to each gallon, according to its acidity, from 1/2 to 2 pounds white crushed sugar, and let the whole ferment until it possesses precisely the taste which it is desired should be permanent. In this condition pour out a quart of the cider and add for each gallon 1/4 ounce of sulphite (not sulphate) of lime. Stir the powder and cider until intimately mixed, and return the emulsion to the fermenting liquid. Agitate briskly and thoroughly for a few moments, and then let the cider settle. Fermentation will cease at once. "When, after a few days, the cider has become clear, draw off carefully, to avoid the sediment, and. bottle. If loosely corked for a short time, it will become a sparkling cider wine, and may be kept indefinitely long.