METHEGLIN. Metheglin, or mead made of ho0y, has been known since the remotest times.
Long after the introduction of wine, and even beer, it was the national drink of the English, as beer is to this nation and the Germans now. It is one of the most healthful, moderately used, of any of the fermented spirituous liquors, and as insidious as it is seductive, if immoderately used. A story is told of a British officer soon after the Revolutionary war, who, visiting this country, was made drunk on metheglin. He journeyed from New York to Philadelphia through New Jersey, famous then for its metheglm as it has since become for its cider, remained in Philadel phia a week, and returned to New York declar ing that it took him a week to get well drunken on the honey wine, and, on my honor, he added, I think it will take me a year to get sober. To make metheglin the sweet or honey water obtained from the operation of purifying or clarifying the honey is boiled in a kettle and repeatedly skimmed off. The boiling continues until the mass has attained such a consistency as to bear a hen's egg, with its point reaching out of the liquid. If there is not honey water enough, or if none at all, mix honey and water, the honey being one-fourth to one-third of the weight of the water. After it is sufficiently boiled, cool it off, put it into a cask so as to fill it nearly full; then bring the cask into a place of from 54° to 59' Fahr., covered with a cloth, and allow it to ferment. After six weeks, and in warm countries much sooner, filter it through blotting paper and put it into small casks. What remains may be filled into bottles, which are closed, hut not tight, with a rag, and put away in a cool place. The fermentation also continues in this second cask, which is but lightly closed with a bung covered with a cloth. The mass in the cask is gradually reduced by fer mentation, so that what remained in the bottles can now be added. After nine or ten months the metheglin is again put into another cask, with the bung driven in tightly and the cask set in some cool place. When completely fermented a healthy beverage is obtained, that bottled quite air-tight will keep for a long time and continu ally improves. Another notable think is honey wine. Boil slightly thirty pounds of honey and sixty quarts or fifteen gallons of water for two hours, skim and cool it off and treat it like metheglin, except that a nutmeg and one ounce of coarsely-ground cinnamon are put into a linen or cotton bag, and inserted in the bung hole, and thus kept suspended in order to impart an aro matic flavor to the wine This beverage, similar to the Spanish grape wine, but excelling it in quality, invigorates the stomach, promotes diges tion, purifies the blood, and is very beneficial to the chest. There is another kind of honey wine,
which, by being kept bottled a few years, will equal the hest Madeira, and form a roost delici ous beverage, though it is somewhat troublesome to prepare it. Mix forty pounds of honey with eighty quarts or twenty gallons of running water, put it into a clean kettle, gently boil it and skim it. After thirty minutes gradually add five pounds of finely-ground chalk, continually stir ring the mass. Skim off the tough substance which gathers at the top of the kettle until no more of it appears on the surface, then pour the mass into a vessel, allowing it to subside and cool, so that the chalk may settle. Let the kettle in the meanwhile be thordughly cleansed of the chalk remaining in it, and the mass carefully poured back again into the kettle, with an a'ddi tion of nine pounds of finely pulverized charcoal, and then gently boil the whole for two hours. Put the liquid again in a clean vessel to cool off a second time, after which filter it through a pointed bag of felt or flannel. After this pour the liquid once more into a kettle and heat it up to the boiling point. Then take the whites of thirty-five eggs, mix them with water, stirring the whole until a foam appears, and add it gradually to the other mixture. The liquid is perfectly clarified by the addition of this foam, which takes off the particles of charcoal that may have remlined, together with other impur ities. The chalk removes the acid taste, and the charcoal that of wax. The liquid, after the whites of eggs has been added, is gently boiled another hour, allowed to cool down, and then filled into a cask having a sniall space empty about the burg hole, which is lightly covered with a piece of linen so as to permit the mass to ferment. The additional treatment is the same as before given. Clarified in the cask and bottled, this wine will keep for an age. Cool cellars of from 38° to 41° Fahr., are, of course, a main requisite. The bottles are to be laid in wet sand, on which salt water is occasionally poured. Metheglin, even when young and not yet possessing much vigor or spirit, will make a pleasant beverage mixed with tart, especially red wines. All taart wines, in general, can thus be made agreeablZ and thoroughly improved.