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Drink

Balm-Wine

A fermented beverage made by boiling water, sugar, and balm tops, then fermenting with yeast and bottling with added sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Balm-Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquor

  1. Boil water and sugar gently for 2 hours.

  2. Skim off any foam and cool the mixture in a tub.

Ferment

  1. Bruise the balm tops and place them in a barrel with a little new yeast.

  2. Pour the cooled liquid over the balm and stir well.

  3. Let it stand for 24 hours.

  4. Stir often.

  5. Close it up.

  6. Let it stand for 6 weeks.

  7. Rack it off.

Bottle

  1. Add a lump of sugar to each bottle before corking.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
Balm tops
Supply the lemon-balm aroma and flavour that the wine carries.
New yeast
Starts the fermentation that turns the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Pour the cooled liquid over the balm and stir well. If the liquid is still hot, it can kill the yeast before fermentation begins. Cooling first keeps the yeast alive so it can start converting sugar.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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