His humble Servant,

  T.C.

The Cyder-Maker’s Instructor.

Let your fruit be as near the same ripeness as possible, otherwise the juice will not agree in fermenting.  When they are properly sweated, grind and press them; and as soon as you have filled a cask, if a hogshead, which is one hundred and ten gallons, ferment it as follows; and if less, proportion the ingredients to your quantity.

A ferment for cyder.

To one hogshead of cyder, take three pints of solid yest, the mildest you can get; if rough, wash it in warm water, and let it stand ’till it is cold.  Pour the water from it, and put it in a pail or can; put to it as much jalap as will lay on a six-pence, beat them well together with a whisk, then apply some of the cyder to it by degrees ’till your can is full.  Put it all to the cyder, and stir it well together.  When the ferment comes on, you must clean the bung-holes every morning with your finger, and keep filling the vessel up.  The ferment for the first five or six days will be black and stiff; let it stand till it ferments white and kind, which it will do in fourteen or fifteen days; at that time stop the ferment, otherwise it will impair its strength.

To stop the ferment.

In stopping this ferment, which is a very strong one, you must first rack it into a clean cask, and when pretty near full, put to it three pounds of course, red, scowering sand, and stir it well together with a strong stick, and fill it within a gallon of being full; let it stand five or six hours, then pour on it as softly as you can a gallon of English spirit, and bung it up close; but leave out the vent-peg a day or two.  At that time just put it in the hole and close it by degrees till you have got it close.  Let it lay in that state at least a year, and if very strong cyder, such as stire, the longer you keep it the better it will be in the body; and when you pierce it, if not bright, force it in the following manner.

A forcing for cyder.

Take a gallon of perry or stale beer, put to it one ounce of isinglass, beat well and cut or pull’d to small pieces; put it to the perry or beer, and let it steep three or four days.  Keep whisking it together, or else the glass will stick to the bottom, and have no effect on the liquor.  When it comes to a stiff jelly, beat it well in your can with a whisk, and mix some of the cyder with it, ’till you have made the gallon four; then put two pounds of brick rubbings to it, and stir it together with two gallons of cyder more added to it, and apply to the hogshead; stir it well with your paddle, and shive it up close.  The next day give it vent, and you will find it fine and bright.  If you force perry, cut your isinglass with cyder or stale beer, for no liquor will force its own body.

To cure acid cyder.