The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, Sir Kenelm Digby [books to read in a lifetime .txt] 📗

last glass full be as pure and as quick as the first. You begin to broach it high. Let your Cask have served for Sweet-wine.


TO MAKE ALE DRINK QUICK

When small Ale hath wrought sufficiently, draw into bottles; but first put into every bottle twelve good raisins of the Sun split and stoned; Then stop up the bottle close, and set it in sand (gravel) or a cold dry Cellar. After a while this will drink exceeding quick and pleasant. Likewise take six Wheat-corns, and bruise them, and put into a bottle of Ale; it will make it exceeding quick and stronger.


TO MAKE CIDER

Take a Peck of Apples, and slice them, and boil them in a barrel of water, till the third part be wasted; Then cool your water as you do for wort, and when it is cold, you must pour the water upon three measures of grown Apples. Then draw forth the water at a tap three or four times a day, for three days together. Then press out the Liquor, and Tun it up; when it hath done working, then stop it up close.


A VERY PLEASANT DRINK OF APPLES

Take about fifty Pippins; quarter and core them, without paring them: for the paring is the Cordialest part of them. Therefore onely wipe or wash them well, and pick away the black excrescence at the top; and be sure to leave out all the seeds, which are hot. You may cut them (after all the superfluities are taken away) into thinner slices, if you please. Put three Gallons of Fountain water to them in a great Pipkin, and let them boil, till the Apples become clear and transparent; which is a sign, they are perfectly tender, and will be in a good half hour, or a little more. Then with your Ladle break them into Mash and Pulpe, incorporated with the water; letting all boil half an hour longer, that the water may draw into it self all the vertue of the Apples. Then put to them a pound and a half of pure dubble refined Sugar in powder, which will soon dissolve in that hot Liquor. Then pour it into an Hippocras bag, and let it run through it two or three times, to be very clear. Then put it up into bottles; and after a little time, it will be a most pleasant, quick, cooling, smoothing drink. Excellent in sharp Gonorrhoeas.


SIR PAUL NEALE'S WAY OF MAKING CIDER

The best Apples make the best Cider, as Pearmains, Pippins, Golden-pippins, and the like. Codlings make the finest Cider of all. They must be ripe, when you make Cider of them: and is in prime in the Summer season, when no other Cider is good. But lasteth not long, not beyond Autumn. The foundation of making perfect Cyder consisteth in not having it work much, scarce ever at all; but at least, no second time; which Ordinary Cider doth often, upon change of weather, and upon motion: and upon every working it grows harder. Do then thus:

Choose good Apples. Red streaks are the best for Cider to keep; Ginet-moils the next, then Pippins. Let them lie about three weeks, after they are gathered; Then stamp and strain them in the Ordinary way, into a woodden fat that hath a spigot three or four fingers breadth above the bottom. Cover the fat with some hair or sackcloth, to secure it from any thing to fall in, and to keep in some of the Spirits, so to preserve it from dying; but not so much as to make it ferment. When the juyce hath been there twelve hours, draw it by the spigot (the fat inclining that way, as if it were a little tilted) into a barrel; which must not be full by about two fingers. Leave the bung open for the Air to come in, upon a superficies, all along the barrel, to hinder it from fermenting; but not so large a superficies as to endanger dying, by the airs depredating too many spirits from it.

The drift in both these settlings is, that the grosser parts consisting of the substance of the Apple, may settle to the bottom, and be severed from the Liquor; for it is that, which maketh it work again (upon motion or change of weather) and spoils it. After twenty four hours draw of it, to see if it be clear, by the settling of all dregs, above which your spigot must be. If it be not clear enough, draw it from the thick dregs into another vessel, and let it settle there twenty four hours. This vessel must be less then the first, because you draw not all out of the first. If then it should not be clear enough, draw it into a third, yet lesser than the second; but usually it is at the first. When it is clear enough draw it into bottles, filling them within two fingers, which stop close. After two or three days visit them; that if there be a danger of their working (which would break the bottles) you may take out the stopples, and let them stand open for half a quarter of an hour. Then stop them close, and they are secure for ever after. In cold freesing weather, set them upon Hay, and cover them over with Hay or Straw. In open weather in Winter transpose them to another part of the Cellar to stand upon the bare ground or pavement. In hot weather set them in sand. The Cider of the Apples of the last season, as Pippins, not Peermains, nor codlings, will last till the Summer grow hot. Though this never work, 'tis not of the Nature of Strummed Wine; because the naughty dregs are not left in it.


DOCTOR HARVEY'S PLEASANT WATER-CIDER, WHEREOF HE USED TO DRINK MUCH, MAKING IT HIS ORDINARY DRINK

Take one Bushel of Pippins, cut them into slices with the Parings and Cores; boil them in twelve Gallons of water, till the goodness of them be in the water; and that consumed about three Gallons. Then put it into an Hypocras-bag, made of Cotton; and when it is clear run out, and almost cold, sweeten it with five pound of Brown-sugar, and put a pint of Ale-yest to it, and set it a working two nights and days: Then skim off the yest clean, and put it into bottles, and let it stand two or three days, till the yest fall dead at the top: Then take it off clean with a knife, and fill it up a little within the neck (that is to say, that a little about a fingers breadth of the neck be empty, between the superficies of the Liquor, and the bottom of the stopple) and then stop them up and tye them, or else it will drive out the Corks. Within a fortnight you may drink of it. It will keep five or six weeks.


ALE WITH HONEY

Sir Thomas Gower makes his pleasant and wholesom drink of Ale and Honey thus. Take fourty Gallons of small Ale, and five Gallons of Honey. When the Ale is ready to Tun, and is still warm, take out ten Gallons of it; which, whiles it is hot, mingle with it the five Gallons of Honey, stirring it exceeding well with a clean arm till they be perfectly incorporated. Then cover it, and let it cool and stand still. At the same time you begin to dissolve the honey in this parcel, you take the other of thirty Gallons also warm, and Tun it up with barm, and put it into a vessel capable to hold all the whole quantity of Ale and Honey, and let it work there; and because the vessel will be so far from being full, that the gross foulness of the Ale cannot work over, make holes in the sides of the Barrel even with the superficies of the Liquor in it, out of which the gross feculence may purge; and these holes must be fast shut, when you put in the rest of the Ale with the Honey: which you must do, when you see the strong working of the other is over; and that it works but gently, which may be after two or three or four days, according to the warmth of the season. You must warm your solution of honey, when you put it in, to be as warm as Ale, when you Tun it; and then it will set the whole a working a fresh, and casting out more foulness; which it would do too violently, if you put it in at the first of the Tunning it. It is not amiss that some feculence lie thick upon the Ale, and work not all out; for that will keep in the spirits. After you have dissolved the honey in the Ale, you must boil it a little to skim it; but skim it not, till it have stood a while from the fire to cool; else you will skim away much of the Honey, which will still rise as long as it boileth. If you will not make so great a quantity at a time, do it in less in the same proportions. He makes it about Michaelmas for Lent.

When strong Beer groweth too hard, and flat for want of Spirits, take four or five Gallons of it out of a Hogshead, and boil five pounds of honey in it, and skim it, and put it warm into the Beer; and after it hath done working, stop it up close. This will make it quick, pleasant and stronger.


SMALL ALE FOR THE STONE

The Ale, that I used to drink constantly of, was made in these proportions. Take fourteen Gallons of Water, and half an Ounce of Hops; boil them near an hour together. Then pour it upon a peck of Malt. Have a care the Malt be not too small ground; for then it will never make clear Ale. Let it soak so near two hours. Then let it run from the Malt, and boil it only one walm or two. Let it stand cooling till it be cool enough to work with barm, which let be of Beer rather than Ale, about half a pint.

After it hath wrought some hours, when you see it come to it's height, and is near beginning to fall in working, Tun it into a barrel of eight Gallons; and in four or five days it will be fit to broach to drink. Since I have caused the wort to be boiled a good half hour; since again I boil it a good hour, and it is much the better; because the former Ale tasted a little Raw. Now because it consumes in boiling, and would be too strong, if this Malt made a less proportion of Ale; I have added a Gallon of water at the first, taking fifteen Gallons instead of fourteen. Since I have added half a peck of Malt to the former proportions, to make it a little stronger in Winter.


APPLE DRINK WITH SUGAR, HONEY, &c

A very pleasant drink is made of Apples, thus; Boil sliced Apples in water, to make the water strong of Apples, as when you make to drink it for coolness and pleasure. Sweeten it with Sugar to your tast, such a quantity of sliced Apples, as would make so much water strong enough of Apples; and then bottle it up close for three or four months. There will come a thick mother at the top, which being taken off, all the rest will be very clear, and quick and pleasant to the taste, beyond any Cider. It will be