Mrs. Hale's Receipts for the Million: Containing Four Thousand Five Hundred and Forty-five Receipts, Facts, Directions, etc. in the Useful, Ornamental, and Domestic Arts
John Stuart Mill · en
1251. _Raisin Wine._--To every gallon of water weigh seven pounds of
raisins; pick them from the stalks, and put them into a tub; pour
the water on the fruit, and let it stand a fortnight or three weeks,
stirring it several times a day. Strain it, and press the fruit very
dry through hair bags, then put it into a barrel, but do not stop
it close. In about four months rack it, and then put a little fresh
fruit, and some brandy, into the barrel. A quart of brandy, and eight
or ten pounds of fruit, are sufficient for twenty-five or thirty
gallons of wine. When the wine is racked, draw it off into a tub,
and pass the sediment that remains through a flannel bag; the head
of the barrel must then be taken out, and the barrel rinsed with a
little of the wine. After the head is again put in, add the brandy
and fruit. Put the bung in for a little time, but not very tight. It
will be necessary to refine the wine with isinglass, about three
weeks before it is bottled, which should not be in less than a year.
One ounce of isinglass, dissolved in half a pint of wine, and stirred
into the barrel, will be sufficient.
Before the water is poured on the fruit, it should be boiled with the
stalks, and with hops; the latter in the proportion of a quarter of
a pound to every thirty gallons of water. Strain the liquor, let it
grow cold, and then add it to the fruit.
1252. _Spruce Wine._--To every gallon of water take a pound and a
half of honey, and half a pound of fine starch. Before the starch
is mixed with the honey-syrup, it must be reduced to a transparent
jelly, by boiling it with part of the water purposely reserved;--a
quarter of a pound of essence of spruce must be used to five gallons
of water, and when sufficiently stirred and incorporated, pour the
wine into the cask. Then add a quarter of a pint of good ale-yeast,
shake the cask well, and let it work for three or four days, after
which, bung it. It may be bottled in a few days, and in ten days
afterwards, will be fit to drink. When this wine is bunged, a quarter
of an ounce of isinglass, first dissolved in a little of the warmed
liquor, may be stirred in by way of fining it. In cold weather, the
quantity of yeast should be increased: in warm weather, very little
ferment is requisite.
1253. _American Currant Wine._--To one gallon of currant juice add
two of water; to each gallon of this mixture add three pounds and
a quarter of sugar, a gill of brandy, and a quarter of an ounce of
powdered alum: put the whole into a clean cask, in March draw off,
and add another gill of brandy to each gallon.