Very Good Elderberry Wine

Instructions

1. Strip the berries, which should be ripe and fresh and gathered on a dry day, clean from the stalks, and measure them into a tub or large earthen pan.
2. Pour boiling water on them in the proportion of two gallons of water to three of berries. Press them down into the liquor, cover them closely, and let them remain until the following day.
3. Strain the juice from the fruit through a sieve or cloth, then squeeze from the berries the greater part of the remaining juice and mix it with that which was first poured off.
4. Measure the whole, and add to it three pounds of sugar, three-quarters of an ounce of cloves, and one ounce of ginger for every gallon.
5. Boil it twenty minutes, keeping it thoroughly skimmed.
6. When it is something more than milk-warm, put it into a perfectly dry and sweet cask - or, if only a very small quantity of wine is made, into large stone bottles, which answer quite well.
7. Fill this entirely, and pour very gently into the bung hole a large spoonful of new yeast mixed with a very small quantity of the wine.