Page:Completeconfectioner Glasse 1800.djvu/344

 To make Cyder.

Let your apples be thoroughly ripe; press out the juice, and throw it into a tub or vat with a tap and canal in it; about thirty or forty hours after you have put it into the vat, you will observe a head to rise upon it; take care not to disturb the head, or suffer it to break, which it will do, if you neglect to draw off the cyder at a proper time. When therefore your head is pretty thick, draw a glass of it now and then, and see whether it is fine; when you see it fine, draw it off into a clean vessel. By this means you will get rid of a good deal of fæces, which, if the head breaks, will mix again with the cyder, and not easily be discharged. When the cyder is in the hogshead, it will begin, after a day or two, to sing or ferment again, which is discovered by putting your ear to the bung of your hogshead. Let it ferment four or five days, in order to raise a proper spirit, but no longer; too great a fermentation being apt to destroy that lusciousness which is necessary to deserve to preserve it, and give it a fine taste of the apple. After it has worked four or five days, rack it into another vessel matched with brimstone; the match of brimstone answers two ends, it stops the fermentation, and by keeping the body quiet, occasions the heavy particles to subside. By this means you will get your cyder perfectly fine, and keep up the strength and lusciousness of it, which by too much fermentation will necessarily go off. After you have got it thoroughly fine, you may rack it into another vessel matched with brimstone, and stop it up till the time of bottling, which is about May, or the