Name: To Preserve and Recover Beer When Flat
Ingredients: 1 pint water; ½ ounce unslacked lime; ½ ounce isinglass; a little water

To Preserve and Recover Beer When Flat

Ingredients

1 pint water
½ ounce unslacked lime
½ ounce isinglass
a little water

Directions

Prepare the solution

Mix the water and unslacked lime well, then let it stand for 3 hours to settle.
Pour off the clear liquid, then mix it with the small pieces of isinglass boiled in a little water.

Fine the beer

Pour the mixture into the barrel, then wait 5 to 6 hours for the beer to become fine.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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

Unslacked lime: Forms an alkaline solution that helps the mixture settle and clear the beer.
Isinglass: Collagen-based fining agent that binds suspended yeast and haze so they drop out of the beer.

“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.