To Refine Beer, Ale, Wine, or Cider
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the isinglass
Soak isinglass shavings in 1 quart of the liquor you want to clear.
Beat it with a whisk every day until dissolved.
Clarify the beer
Draw off a third of the cask and mix it with the dissolved isinglass.
Add ⅓ ounce of pearl-ashes, 1 ounce of salt of tartar, and 1 ounce of burnt alum.
Stir well, return the mixture to the cask, and stir with a clean stick.
Stop it up, and in a few days it will be fine.
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 network that gathers suspended yeast and haze particles so they settle out.
- Pearl-ashes
- Alkaline salt that helps the isinglass dissolve and disperse evenly through the liquor.
- Salt of tartar
- Alkaline potassium carbonate that adjusts the liquor's chemistry so the isinglass can work.
- Burnt alum
- Acidic mineral salt that helps the isinglass bind to haze particles and pull them down.
The step that matters
Dissolving the isinglass fully before adding it to the cask. Isinglass that is not fully dissolved will not spread evenly through the beer, so it cannot gather haze particles uniformly. Daily beating helps it disperse before it is mixed in.
“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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