To Refine Beer, Ale, Wine, or Cyder
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the isinglass
Soak isinglass shavings in 1 quart of liquor for a few days.
Whisk daily until the isinglass dissolves.
Mix and return to the cask
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 the mixture well.
Return the mixture to the cask.
Stir the cask with a clean stick.
Seal the cask.
Clear
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
- Fining agent that collects suspended particles and haze so they settle out of the liquor.
- Pearl-ashes
- Alkaline salt that helps the fining agent work by adjusting the liquor's chemistry.
- Salt of tartar
- Potassium carbonate, an alkaline salt that supports the clearing action of the fining agent.
- Burnt alum
- Acidic mineral salt that helps flocculate particles so they settle and clear the liquor.
The step that matters
Stirring the mixture well before returning it to the cask. The fining agent must be evenly dispersed through the liquor. Uneven mixing leaves pockets where haze is not captured, so the liquor clears unevenly and the sediment settles poorly.
“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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