[Sca-cooks] Verjuice

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach david friedman:
>>   In the reading i've done and in any number of reciepts for various dishes
>>     verjuice has been called upon.
>>My understanding from reading and from here is that verjuice is 
>>little more then
>>the juices extracted from un-ripe grapes.
>>  Where I work happens to have a good number of established grape vines and
>>therefore a goodly number of currently un-ripe grapes.......(can we 
>>see my next project??)
>>Any suggestons or hints as I go forth to make some (hopefully)verjuice?
>>My plan is simple,pick them wash them of,and squeeze them allowing 
>>the juices to collect in a bottle.
>
>There is a 17th c. recipe for verjuice made from crab apples in, I 
>think, Robert May. You might want to look at that for ideas.

I'm pretty sure it's Gervase Markham, who's somewhat earlier than May 
(even though for a minute I confused May with Evelyn, the Acetaria 
fellow, who is later still). Basically the crab apples are trimmed 
and picked free of all black bits, then the apples are crushed and 
pressed for their juice, which is (IIRC) allowed to rest in a vat for 
a short period, where any active fermentation that is going to take 
place (there's not a lot of sugar in crabapple juice) takes place, 
then it is kegged for storage for up to a year.

The main difference from what is described above is you may need to 
give the stuff some time to produce some gases, to prevent that 
bottle from exploding. I suspect you don't need to worry too much 
about keeping it uncovered for a while. G*d forbid it should go sour, 
huh? ;-)

Fermentation is a word thrown about pretty liberally these days, but 
as far as I know, verjuice probably contains various fruit acids, 
lactic and/or acetic acid, and no alcohol to speak of.

Adamantius