Wine from Cider

This is cyser — cider fermented with honey and then fortified with apple spirit. The method is sound but written for a cooper's barrel and a farmer's eye; almost every quantity here needs translating before you can scale it to a carboy.

• "Honey sufficient to bear up an egg"This is a density test standing in for a hydrometer: enough honey that a fresh egg floats, which corresponds roughly to a specific gravity of 1.085-1.095. Sweet cider straight from the press usually starts near 1.045-1.055, so reaching that point takes something on the order of a pound of honey per gallon. Use a hydrometer and treat the egg as a curiosity.
• A barrelA standard American barrel of the period held about 31 to 32 gallons, so the recipe as written makes roughly 120 litres and calls for something like 30-35 lb of honey. Divide by six for a five-gallon batch.
• "Work all of the filth out of the bung hole"This is topping up during the vigorous stage so the yeast head and fruit debris are pushed out of the bunghole rather than left in the wine. A blow-off tube into a jar of water does the same job with far less waste, after which fit an airlock.
• Do not bung tight too earlyThe instruction to bung the cask tight assumes fermentation is finished and the wine is falling clear. A sealed glass carboy or a modern screw-top jug holding still-fermenting cider will build serious pressure. Confirm with hydrometer readings a few days apart that the gravity is stable before sealing anything rigid.
• Egg whites and sandThis is fining. Beaten egg white carries suspended haze down as it coagulates, and the sand is ballast to drag the mass to the bottom. Eight whites for 30 gallons is about one white per four gallons, which is in line with traditional practice; modern equivalents are bentonite or a proprietary fining, and clean sand is not worth sourcing. The wine is racked off the deposit, so most of the egg goes out with the lees, though traces of egg protein can remain.
• "Cider spirits"Apple brandy or applejack made from cider. Period strengths varied a good deal, so any calculation is approximate: if the spirit is around 45-50% alcohol, one gallon in about 30 raises the finished strength by roughly one and a half percent and helps stabilise the wine. Calvados or an American apple brandy substitutes directly.
• TimingFive weeks gets a farmhouse cyser through primary fermentation, not to maturity. Honey wines are notoriously slow to clear and harsh when young; expect six months to a year in the keg before it is pleasant.
• SanitationThe recipe's only cleaning instruction is to cleanse the barrel between rackings. Everything the must touches should be sanitised, and the cider itself should be fresh-pressed or pasteurised juice without potassium sorbate, which will block fermentation.
• The cost noteTwenty-five cents a gallon was a genuine selling point in a household book of this kind, where wine was otherwise an imported expense. It tells you the author expected readers to have a press, a barrel and access to cheap honey.