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Drink

Home-made Wines

A fermented beverage made from fruit juice, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Home-made Wines

10½ gallons

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the fruit juice.

  2. Add water to make a total of 10½ gallons.

  3. Pour the mixture into a large tub.

  4. Cover the tub with a blanket and a board.

  5. Let it sit at 55°F to 60°F for 12 to 24 hours until fermentation begins.

Ferment

  1. Transfer the mixture to a fermentation cask, filling it nearly to the bung-hole.

  2. As fermentation occurs, add more must to keep the level near the bung-hole.

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

White sugar
Feeds the yeast, which converts it into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.

The step that matters

Keeping the cask nearly full. Topping up with more must keeps the liquid level near the bung-hole, limiting the air above the wine so oxygen does not spoil it during fermentation.

“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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