Water cask

“ ENGLISH STUM. Take a five gallon cask that has been well soaked in water, set it to drain; then take a pound of roll brimstone and melt in a ladle; put as many rags to it as will suck up the melted brimstone. Burn half those rags in the cask, covering the bung-hole so much as that it may have just air enough to keep it burning. When burnt out put three gallons of very strong cyder, and one ounce of common allum (pounded and mixt with the cyder) into the cask. Keep rolling the cask about five or six times a day for two days. ”

“ Even the bungs ought to be new; I knew an instance in which a consignment of animals was lost, from no traceable cause, except that the water-cask, which was quite new, had been stopped with a bung, which had been previously used in a jar of some chemical solution; yet the bung had been, as was supposed, thoroughly soaked and cleansed. If a cask of fir-wood can be procured it is preferable: the wood of the oak, of which wine-casks are usually made, gives out tannin or gallic acid, to the contained water, which by its astringency converts the animal integuments into leather ”

“ In a good cellar they will never spoil. Should the casks get musty, the following method will remedy the evil. Soak them well for three or four days in cold water, then fill them full of boiling hot water; put in a lump or two of lime, shake it thoroughly till quite dissolved, let the casks stand about half an hour, then wash them out with cold water, and they will be clean and sweet. If still apprehensive of the beer getting flat or sour, put into a cask containing eighteen gallons, a pint of ground malt suspended in a bag, and close the bung perfectly. ”

“ Let the cask be kept full with some of the liquor reserved for the purpose. It will ferment for ten days, sometimes for three weeks: when ceased, and only a hissing noise remains, draw off two or three bottles, according to the strength you wish it to have, from every 20 pint cask, and fill up the cask with brandy or whiskey; but brandy is preferable. To make it very good, and that it may keep well, add as much sherry, together with a 1⁄4 oz. of isinglass dissolved in water to make it quite liquid; stir the whole well. Bung the cask up, and surround the bung with clay ”

“ The cask, or float, whatever it may be, when attached to the line, is thrown into the water, and after being rolled and tossed, hither and thither, by the tumultuous waves, now advancing, now receding, and now sweeping [Pg 163] madly around in endless gyrations, it at length reaches a point where some adventurous wrecker on the beach can seize it, and pull it up upon the land. The line is then drawn in, and a hawser being attached to the outer end of it, by the crew of the ship, the end of the hawser itself is then drawn to the shore. ”

“ Your currants must be quite ripe, bruise them to a mesh with your hands, and to every quart of pulp, put the same quantity of water, mix them together in a tub, and let them stand till next day, then strain them through a hair sieve, and to each gallon, allow two pounds and a half of sugar; when the latter is quite melted, put the liquor in a cask, with a little dissolved isinglass: then to every two gallons add a pint of mountain wine; bung up the cask; when fine, draw it off. Wash the cask with a little brandy, strain the grounds through a bag, and put the whole into the cask again ”

“ Get equal quantities of morello and common black cherries; fill your cask, and pour on (to a ten gallon cask) one gallon of boiling water; in two or three hours, fill it up with brandy—let it stand a week, then draw off all, and put another gallon of boiling water, and fill it again with brandy—at the end of the week, draw the whole off, empty the cask of the cherries, and pour in your brandy with water, to reduce the strength; first dissolving one pound of brown sugar in each gallon of your mixture. If the brandy be very strong, it will bear water enough to make the cask full. ”

“ Of cleaning and sweetening Casks & Brewing Vessels.
If a cask, after the beer is drank out, be well stopt to keep out the air, and the lees remaining in it till you want to use it again, you will need only to scald it well, and take care of the hoops before you fill it; but if air gets into a foul empty cask, it will contract an ill scent in spight of scalding. A handful of bruised pepper boiled in the water you scald with, will take out a little musty smell ”

“ But they must be carefully washed before putting wine into them. They are less liable to be attacked by the borer if stored in a dark place.
New Casks.—Before putting wine into a new cask, it is ordinarily sufficient to give it a thorough washing with boiling water. Pour in one or two gallons of hot water, bung it up, and roll it and shake it about till it is thoroughly rinsed, letting it rest awhile on each end, and not only will this sufficiently cleanse the cask, but will show if there are any leaks. ”

“ New casks should be seasoned before they are used; one way recommended is, to boil 2 pecks of bran or malt dust in a copper of water, pour it hot into the cask, stop close, and let it stand two days, then wash it out well, and drain the cask. Servants are negligent about vent-pegs and bungs. They should be put in tight, the tap taken out, and a cork put in, as soon as the last beer is drawn. If the casks were kept in proper order, beer would not so often be spoiled. Of equal consequence, is the cleanness of the brewing utensils. ”

“ In what had been the steward's storeroom they found a harness-cask with bones and dry rust in the bottom. "It's salt meat, I suppose," said the doctor, "reduced to its elements." With the handles of their pistols they carefully hammered down the rusty hoops over the shrunken staves, which were well preserved by the brine they had once held, and taking the cask on deck, cleaned it thoroughly under the scuppers—or drain-holes—of the poop, and let it stand under the stream of water to swell and sweeten itself.
"If we find more casks we'll catch some more," said Boston ”

“ The second cask was filled with fresh water, to replace that in the first when it should no longer be fit for the use of the fish. These delicate little trout are so sensitive to any impurity, that they could not have remained in the same water during the drive home without suffering. Indeed, they might have died before reaching the pond.
My young readers may not know that fish breathe an element of the water which is a part of air also. In fact, the same element which sustains us sustains them also, viz., oxygen. Only one ninth part of water, however, is oxygen, while of air it is one fifth. ”

“ Lind directs a small cask, open at both ends, to be placed within a larger vessel, the head of which has been taken out: clean sand and gravel are then to be put into both vessels, so that the level of the sand in the inner cask be higher than the bed in the intermediate space between the two barrels; sufficient room being left for pouring in the water. A cock should now be placed in the external cask, above the gravel or sand ”

“ One small cask, only partly full of water, remained, with two packages of dried manatee flesh, and a few oranges and other fruits,—which were, besides, fast spoiling. Uncle Paul served them out with the greatest care; giving Marian, however, a larger portion than the rest of us—though he did not tell her so, lest she should refuse to take it. ”

“ Place the cucumbers at the bottom, one against the other, and cover them with a bed of chopped fennel, some young leaves of the cherry-tree, and some crushed coriander seed. Pour some salted water on them, which has been already boiled, and allowed to get cold. Then cover up the cask carefully, and place in some cool place, resting on pieces of wood, to prevent the cask touching the ground. Cold water previously boiled must be added, should the moisture ooze away. The cask must be watched every day, and any mould which may by chance accumulate on the top be carefully removed. ”

“ Nothing has been found so effectual for preserving water sweet as charring the insides of the casks well before they are filled. When the water becomes impure and offensive, from ignorance of the preservative effect produced on it by charring the casks previous to their being filled, it may be rendered perfectly sweet by putting a little fresh charcoal in powder into the cask, or by filtering it through fresh burnt and coarsely pulverized charcoal. ”

“ Strain the liquid through a jelly-bag or fine sieve, pressing the pulp as dry as possible without allowing any of it to pass through the sieve. Add the sugar, stir occasionally until dissolved, then turn the preparation into a cask, and cover the bung-hole with a folded cloth. As soon as fermentation subsides add the brandy. Bung the cask securely, and allow it to remain undisturbed for 3 months. Rack the wine into a clean, dry cask, add the very finely-pared rind of the oranges and lemons, the barley-sugar finely-powdered, and the isinglass dissolved in a little warm water. ”

“ Take a cask that has been well seasoned with right old Malaga, new trim it, and hoop it strong, leaving it open at one end, to which open end a close cover must be fitted, to take off and put on at pleasure, and keep it in all seasons in a warm place; fill it with spring or conduit water, and so every gallon of water add six pounds of the best Malaga raisins, well bruised, and sprinkled on every twenty gallons a handful of calx wine ”

“ It consists simply of a cask, capable of holding a sufficient quantity of water, for the purpose of irrigating the garden. The hinder part of this vessel is furnished with a cock that communicates with the watering pipes, and the cask is supported on a strong frame, with one or two wheels, calculated for walks about 18 inches wide. The carriage may be drawn by a mule or an ass, and requires a person to guide the animal ”

“ The poor apply to the distributors of iced barley-water, who carry about a sort of cask, strapped between their shoulders, and containing ice in the centre, to maintain the frigidity of the beverage. By lowering and advancing the left shoulder, the vendor pours the contents of the cask through a small neck or pipe into the glasses, which he carries in a flat basket with cellaret partitions. ”

“ If you have only a single cask, holes may be bored in the lower part of its sides, and alternate layers of sand and grass thrown in, till they cover the holes; through these layers, the water will strain. ”

“ Some dairymen let them lie in pure water a whole summer and winter long, and wash them out in lye, and then treat them just as they do those that have been used. Others, however, who give the new casks the preference over the old, but who cannot wait for the soaking in lye over summer and winter, treat them in the following manner: They prepare a lye of good American potash, which generally contains the most alkali, in a cask holding some three hundred quarts, taking a pound of potash to twenty pounds of water. ”

“ Take as much water as will be required to fill up the cask, put it on the fire, with 22 lbs. of the best lump sugar, stir from time to time, and let it boil gently about a quarter of an hour, taking off the scum as it rises. Take it off the fire, let it cool, pour it into the cask, and put in a little good yeast. It may, perhaps, continue to ferment two or three weeks; when this has ceased, put in 3 lbs. raisins, chopped fine; these may cause fresh fermentation, which must be allowed to subside; then put in the rinds of 4 Seville oranges, and their juice, also a quart of good brandy ”

“ All too soon the pleasant occupation came to an end. The long row of casks, filled to the brim and tightly bunged, were towed off by us to the ship, and ranged alongside. A tackle and pair of "can-hooks" was overhauled to the water and hooked to a cask. "Hoist away!" And as the cask rose, the beckets that had held it to the mother-rope were cut, setting it quite free to come on board, but leaving all the others still secure. In this way we took in several thousand gallons of water in a few hours, with a small expenditure of labour, free of cost ”

“ The quantity of air thus separated from water is so great that in the Alps and in the Pyrennees, very powerful bellows are made for forges by the fall of a column of water, through a wooden pipe, into a closed cask, in which it dashes on a stone in the bottom, when the air thus disengaged from it is carried by another pipe placed in the cover of the cask into the foundery. ”

“ We ate our crackers, and when we had finished them I turned to the cask to get some water. I pulled out the bung, and was horrified to discover that the cask was empty!
"The water's gone!" I gasped.
"What!"
"It's true; there isn't a drop in the cask!" ”

“ Hence a ship is said to be tight, when her planks are so compact and solid as to prevent the entrance of the water in which she is immersed: and a cask is called tight, when the staves are so close that none of the liquid contained therein can issue through or between them. ”

“ A white gallon cask, with gold edged hoops, adorned with four trophies of music emblems of love, in chiaro-oscuro, surmounted by a young coloured Bacchus, sitting on the bung tasting a grape, of which he holds a basket full between his legs, and a cup in his left hand, the barrel is made to turn round on a pivot fixed in an ormolu pediment, a satyr’s mask holds an ormolu cock in his mouth, which opens and shuts by a spring. ”