To Refine Beer, Ale, Wine, or Cyder
Ingredients
Directions
Dissolve the isinglass
Soak isinglass shavings in 1 quart of liquor for a few days, whisking daily until dissolved.
Clarify the beer
Draw off a third of the cask and mix in the dissolved isinglass, pearl-ashes, salt of tartar, and burnt alum.
Stir well and return the mixture to the cask.
Seal the cask and in a few days, the liquor will be clear.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Isinglass shavings
- Forms a fine protein network that gathers suspended particles so they settle out.
- Pearl-ashes
- Alkaline salt that helps the isinglass dissolve and adjusts the liquor's chemistry for fining.
- Burnt alum
- Acidic mineral that helps haze-forming particles clump together for settling.
The step that matters
Stir well and return the mixture to the cask. The fining agents must be evenly dispersed through the whole volume so every part of the beer contacts them. Uneven mixing leaves cloudy pockets that will not clear.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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