Hot Punch

3 pints of old ale or good-quality beer

(not bottled ale)

1 pint home-made wine (orange, lemon, grape­fruit or strongly-flavored root-wine is best)

1 sliced lemon • pinch of ginger • 1 clove

Bring the ale or beer to boiling-point and cut off the heat at once. Pour in the wine and then add the ginger and clove. Use the sliced lemon only if lemon wine has not been used - squeeze it into the mixture and leave the slices floating while you keep the brew hot on a low gas for five minutes. Strain and serve hot.

This punch cannot be stored: make it in smaller quantities, or as desired.

Mint-Julep

½ pint light ale • ¼ pint water

1 double glass home-made or commercial sherry

juice of 1 lemon • 2 fresh mint leaves

Mix the liquids together and sweeten to taste. Add the juice of the lemon and then bruise the mint leaves and float them on the surface for ten minutes. Stir well, take off the mint leaves and serve.

Tea Wine

Make a pot of tea and let it stand for five minutes. Strain into a jug, and to each cupful of tea add 1½ teaspoonfuls of sugar. Then add 1 wine-glassful of strong­ly-flavored home-made wine (not port-style) to each cup of tea. Serve warm or cold.

Imitation Sherry Cobbler

½ pint home-made or commercial sherry

2 wine-glassfuls orange wine or orange juice

juice of ½ lemon

Squeeze the lemon into the sherry and mix the ingre­dients together. Sweeten to taste, and serve.

Imitation Egg Flip

White of 1 egg • 1 cupful milk

3 dessertspoonfuls home-made sherry (other home-made wines, not port-style, may be used)

Mix the milk with the sherry by stirring briskly with a fork. Whisk the egg-white until it is stiff and frothy. Then pour this into the milk-sherry mixture and whisk well. Serve after five minutes.

Ginger Beer (alcoholic)

As we all know, ginger beer should be cloudy, and this characteristic is produced by boiling the ingredients (in­cluding the ginger) in the water. Ginger beer is sub½ect to licensing laws: it must not be made to a greater strength than 2 per cent of proof spirit.

Made in the following manner and with the exact amount of sugar prescribed, the beer will be within the permitted maximum. Naturally, ginger beer has to be 'fizzing*; I can hardly call it 'sparkling* because it also has to be cloudy. In view of this you will appreciate that some skill is needed to make it properly.

2 oz. bruised Jamaican ginger • 3 lemons

1 oz. cream of tartar • ½ oz. citric acid

2 gallons water • 1½ lb. sugar • 1 oz. yeast

Slice the lemons and put them into a large china jug with other ingredients. Pour the boiling water over them. Now put the jug into a large saucepan partly fill­ed with water and boil for ten minutes, stirring the con­tents of the jug several times. Boil the remainder of the two gallons of water and put this into the fermenting vessel. Then pour the jug of ingredients into this. Leave overnight. Strain, and add one ounce of yeast. When the beer has been fermenting for eight or twelve hours it should be safe to bottle it and screw home the stop­pers. Strain before bottling, of course, and if fermen­tation seems to be rather too vigorous, leave for a little while before screwing home the stoppers.

As with brewing beers and ales (see next chapter), the skill comes in deciding the exact moment to screw up.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...