1920's Malt Tonic

Directions for making Malt Tonic (1928 - Roger Pochon)

Place 1 package (3 oz) Oregon Hops into 2 gallons of water, boil continuously for 50 minutes. Strain same through double thickness cloth, squeezing out all juices from the hop leaves.

Add to the liquid, one jar concentrated malt product (2 ¼ fl. conn), 1 ½ - 2 lbs brown or white sugar. Stir well and again boil same for 15 minutes, stirring same and skimming off all foamy substance. Strain into a six gallon jar adding 4 gallons of cold water. Dissolve cake of compressed yeast in cup of luke warm water and allow same to stand for 5 minutes. Make sure that the temperature of mixture is not over 80 degrees F. before adding dissolved yeast.

Place jar where temperature is between 75 and 80 degrees, leave same stand for 60 hours, skim off foam twice a day. When bottling be careful not to stir up sediment, after bottled place in cool dark room for one week.

The tonic becomes better with age. Put on ice before serving. If after standing for 4 or 5 days has too much gas, it indicates that the same was bottled too soon. On the other hand if tonic lacks gas, it was allowed to ferment too long before bottling.