Page:Art of Cookery 1774 edition.djvu/334

296 your wort. Have ready a large tum, put two sticks across, and set your straining basket over the tub on the sticks, and strain your wort thro' it. Put your other wort on to boil with the rest of the hops; let your mash be still covered again with water, an thin your wort that is cooled in as many things as you can; for the thinner it lies, and the quicker it cools, the better. When quite cool, put it into the tunning-tub. Mind to throw a handful of salt into every boil. When the mash has stood an hour draw it off, then fill your mash with cold water, take off the wort in the copper and order it as before. When cool, add to it the first in the tub; so soon as you empty the copper, fill the other, so boil your small beer well. Let the last mash run off, and when both are boiled with fresh hops, order them as the two first boilings; when cool, empty the mash-tub, and put the small beer to work there. When cool enough, work it, set a wooden bowl full of yeast in the beer, and it will work over with a little of the beer in the boil. Stir your tun up every twelve hours, let it stand two days, then tun it, taking off the yeast. Fill your vessels full, and save some to fill your barrels; let it stand till it has done working, then lay on your bung lightly for a fortnight, after that stop is as close as you can. Mind you have a vent-peg at the top of the vessel; in warm weather, open it; and if your drink hisses, as it often will, loosen it till it has done, then stop it close again. If you can boil your ale in one boiling it is best, if your copper will allow of it; if not, boil it as conveniency serves. The strength of your beer must be according to the malt you allow, more or less; there is no certain rule.

When you come to draw your beer, and find it is not fine, draw off a gallon, and set it on the fire, with two ounces of isinglass cut small and heat. Dissolve it in the beer over the fire; when it is all melted, let it stand till it is cold, and pour it in at the bung, which must lay loose on till it has done frmenting, then stop it close for a month.

Take great care your casks are not musty, or have any ill taste, if they have, it is the hardest thing in the world to sweeten them.

You are to wash your casks with cold water before you scald them, and they should lie a day or two soaking, and clean them well, then scald them.

MIX two handfuls of bean flower, and one handful of salt, throw this into a kilderkin of beer, don't stop it close till it has done fermenting, then let it stand a month, and draw it off; but sometimes nothing will do with it.