To Refine Beer, Ale, Wine, or Cyder
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the isinglass
Soak isinglass shavings in 1 quart of the liquor for a few days.
Whisk daily until the isinglass is dissolved.
Mix the fining solution
Draw off a third of the cask.
Mix the drawn-off liquor with the dissolved isinglass.
Add pearl-ashes, salt of tartar, and burnt alum to the mixture.
Stir well.
Fine the liquor
Return the mixture to the cask.
Stir with a clean stick.
Seal the cask.
Wait a few days until the liquor is 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 collagen network that gathers haze particles and settles them out of the liquor.
- Pearl-ashes
- Alkaline salt that helps dissolve the isinglass evenly into the liquor before fining.
- Salt of tartar
- Alkaline potassium carbonate that helps the isinglass disperse and bind the haze particles.
- Burnt alum
- Acidic mineral salt that helps the isinglass coagulate and settle with the haze.
The step that matters
Dissolving the isinglass fully before mixing it in. Isinglass is a collagen protein that only disperses when soaked and stirred over several days. Undissolved pieces will not form the fining network, so the haze will not settle evenly and clear beer may stay cloudy.
“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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