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.