Page:The English housekeeper, 6th.djvu/367

Rh with water every day, while the wine ferments, and be bunged up tight, when it ceases. This is a cheap and simple method of making currant wine.—Or: put a bushel of red, and a peck of white currants, into a tub or pan, squeeze well; strain them through a sieve upon 28 lbs. of powdered sugar; when the sugar is dissolved put in some water in the proportion of 1½ gallon to 1 gallon of juice, pour it all into the barrel, add 3 or 4 pints of raspberries, and a little brandy.

Put the raisins in at the bung-hole of a close cask (which will be the better for having recently had wine in it), then pour in spring water, in the proportion of a gallon to 8 lbs. raisins; the cask should stand in a good cellar, not affected by external air. When the fermentation begins to subside, pour in a bottle of brandy, and put the bung in loosely; when the fermentation has wholly subsided, add a second bottle of brandy, and stop the cask close. In a year it will be fit to bottle, immediately from the cask, without refining. Malaga raisins make the finest wine: Smyrna, rich and full, and more resembling foreign wine.

To every pound of green gooseberries, picked and bruised, add 1 quart of water, steep them four days, stirring twice a day. Strain the liquor through a sieve, and to every gallon add 3 lbs. loaf sugar; also to every 20 gallons, a quart of brandy, and a little isinglass. When the sugar is dissolved, tun the wine, and let it work, which it will do in a week, or little more, keeping back some of the wine to fill up the cask, before you stop it close. Let it stand in the barrel six months, bottle it, in six more begin to drink it.

Boil 1 peck of berries in 4 gallons of water, half an hour; strain and add 2½ lbs. moist sugar. To every gallon of water add ½ oz. cloves, and 2 oz. ginger, tied in a linen