Ink, 17th-18th century

I went looking for a home-made ink for 16th century use, and ended up finding a number of recipes from the 17th/18th centuries:

The Mysteryes of Nature, and Art (1654) has a page of recipes for different colors of printing ink, as well as a "good writing ink".

Naturall Experiments, or Physick for the Poor (1657) has instructions for red, green, blue ,and gold-colored ink. 

Eighteen Books of the Secrets of Art and Nature (1661) page 272 has a simple receipt with copperas, oak galls, gum arabic, and white wine

Polygraphice (1685) Another oak gall/copperas/wine/gum arabic receipt

Modern Curiosities of Art&Nature (1685) has recipes for India ink, powdered ink, "an excellent ink for writing", ink for parchment or grease-paper, silver and gold ink, etc.

New Curiosities in Art and Nature (1711): India ink recipe with horsebeans 

Three Essays in Artificial Philosophy (1731)

Dictionarium Polygraphicum (1735) the "Another good black ink" receipt with copperas, oak galls and stale beer looks promising. 

The Laboratory (1740):Same as others, uses alum, sal ammonia.

The Instructor; Or Young Man's Best Companion (1742) Like the others, with rock alum added

I decided to try the common combination of oak galls and copperas (aka ferrous sulfate aka iron (II) sulfate), which are both conveniently available at my favorite dye supplier. The main difference between the first and last of these seems to be the inclusion of alum in the later 18th century versions. There's also some variety in whether the solvent is water, beer, or wine.

 I went with the stale beer/copperas/oak gall/gum arabic version from Mysteryes of Nature, at a 1/2 scale (1/2 pint beer, 1 handful galls), though the vitriol quantity is not given (the gum is to be 1/3 that amount). So, I filled in from the Dictionarium Polygraphicum which calls for 2-3oz vitriol/3 pints solvent, which I ended up approximating as 1 tsp vitriol and 1/2 tsp gum arabic.

Ingredients assembled.

Coarsely cut oak galls, in a not-for-food-use glass jar.

The galls soaked in beer overnight.

I let the galls soak almost 24 hours, having intended to leave them overnight, then running into scheduling issues. The liquid stayed a dark, gross brown the whole time. [It also smelled of off-beer, as a warning.] I filtered through muslin to remove the galls and some of the scum, then added the vitriol and gum at which point the ink started turning black. I stirred it in a hot water bath as it darkened, letting it go about 2 hours total. This is more than was called for, but as some of the other recipes want you to heat it for days at a time, this seemed reasonable. I decanted the ink into a storage container (and my clay inkwell) and gave it a try.

Finished ink. It writes well with a steel nib, now to try some quills.