To Refine Beer, Ale, Wine, or Cyder
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the isinglass
Soak the isinglass shavings in 1 quart of liquor for a day.
Whisk daily until dissolved.
Fine the cask
Draw off a third of the cask.
Mix the dissolved isinglass, pearl-ashes, salt of tartar, and burnt alum into the drawn-off liquor.
Stir well and return the mixture to the cask.
Seal the cask and wait a few days until it 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
- Dissolved collagen forms a fine network that gathers suspended yeast and haze so they settle out.
- Pearl-ashes
- Alkaline salt that helps the isinglass disperse evenly in the liquor before fining.
- Salt of tartar
- Alkaline potassium carbonate that adjusts the liquor's acidity so the fining agent works well.
- Burnt alum
- Acidic mineral salt that helps the fining agent bind to particles and clump them for settling.
The step that matters
Whisking the isinglass until fully dissolved. Isinglass that is not fully dissolved leaves undissolved fibres that cannot bind haze, so the liquor stays cloudy and the fining is weak. Daily whisking over the soak helps it break down evenly.
“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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