To Make Elder Wine Recipe

Ingredients, two gallons of elderberries, two quarts of damsons, eight

pounds of raw sugar, at 4-1/2d. per pound, two gallons of water, two

ounces of ginger, one ounce of cloves, and half a pint of fresh yeast.

To make this quantity of elder wine, you must have a copper, a tub, a

large canvas or loose flannel bag, and a five-gallon barrel. First,

crush the elderberries and damsons thoroughly in the pot or copper in

which they are to be boiled; then add the water, and keep stirring all

together as it boils, until the fruit is well dissolved; then use a

wooden bowl or a basin to pour the whole into a loose flannel bag,

steadily fixed across two stout sticks, resting safely on two chairs,

or, if you have one, a large coarse sieve instead. When all the liquor

has passed through into the tub, put the dregs back into the copper, to

be boiled up with a couple of quarts of water, and then to be strained

to the other liquor. The next part of the process is to put the whole of

the elderberry juice back into the clean pot or copper, with the sugar,

and the spice, well bruised with a hammer; stir all together, on the

fire, and allow the wine to boil gently for half an hour, then pour it

into the clean tub to cool; the half-pint of yeast must then be added,

and thoroughly mixed by stirring. At the end of two days, skim off the

yeast which, by that time, will have risen to the surface. The elder

wine must now be put into the barrel, and kept in the cellar with the

bung-hole left open for a fortnight; at the end of this time, a stiff

brown paper should be pasted over the bung-hole, and after standing for

a month or six weeks, the wine will be ready for use. To be obliged to

buy all the ingredients for making elder wine, would render it a matter

of great difficulty--perhaps, in some cases, an impossibility; but,

remember, that when living in the country, where in some parts

elderberries grow in the hedge-rows, you may have them for the trouble

of gathering them, in which case the elder wine would be cheaper, and

more easily within your means.

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