tir 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.

It is always to be observ'd, that even weak _alkali_'s cure the
strongest acid, such, for instance, as calcin'd chalk, calcin'd
oyster or scallop-shells, calcin'd egg-shells, alabaster, &c. But if
a hogshead can soon be drank, use a stronger _alkali_, such as salt of
tartar, salt of wormwood; but in using them, you must always preserve
their colour with _lac_, or else the _alkali_ will turn the liquor
black, and keep it foul.

To one hogshead, take two gallons of _lac_, and put t