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Filter-Bags for Cordials
Fining with Eggs.
Take the white of four eggs, beat them to a stiff froth, add a little alcohol, amd mix it gradually with 20 gallons of cordial, stirring all the while, and it will soon clarify the liquor.
Fining with Potash.
Two ounces of carbonate of potash (salts of tartar) dissolved in a quart of water, is sufficient to settle 20 gallons of cordial; add and stir as directed above.
Fining with Alum.
Six drachms of powdered calcinated alum, dissolved in alcohol, is sufficient to clarify 20 gallons of cordial, add as directed above.
Filter Bags for Cordials. (See Filters and Filtration, page 24.) The filter bags used for rendering cordials transparent are made of flannel, felt, Canton flannel, and other materials according to the thickness or density of the liquor, and are generally of a conical shape. In order to perform the operation of filtering cordials thoroughly, it is necessary that there should be placed inside of each bag one or two sheets of filtering paper prepared as follows: Rub each sheet of paper until it becomes soft and flimsy like a piece of cloth, then tear it in small pieces and place it in a pail, pour over it a little boiling water, and rub and beat it up until it becomes a soft pulp, afterwards add more water, and continue the same as if you were beating up eggs. When the pulp assumes the appearance of a fine paste, fill up the pail with water and throw the contents into the filter; as soon as the water has run
This is a clarifying and filtering procedure rather than a formula for a drink, but it comes with real quantities and a fixed sequence. The batch size assumed throughout is 20 gallons.
- The hinge: disperse, then leave it aloneEvery one of these finings is added slowly into a moving liquid so it disperses before it can clump. Once it is in, stop stirring and let the batch stand until the haze has fallen; the whole point is a compact sediment you can rack or filter off cleanly, and re-stirring undoes the work.
- Scaling downFor a gallon rather than 20, the egg fining works out to a fifth of one egg white, a teaspoon or so measured before beating. The potash and alum quantities come down to roughly 3 g and 1.2 g per gallon, too small to divide by eye even if a fine scale would manage them.
- Drachms and other old weightsAn apothecaries' drachm is 1/8 ounce, so six drachms is about 23 g. A quart here is the US quart, roughly 950 ml.
- Salts of tartarThe parenthesis is the book's own gloss and it is accurate: carbonate of potash is potassium carbonate, still sold as a food-grade additive. It neutralises acid, and will flatten the acidity of a tart cordial.
- Calcined alumBurnt or calcined alum is dehydrated potassium aluminium sulphate. It was a standard clarifier in the 19th century and is not one now; commercial and home practice has moved to bentonite clay, gelatin or isinglass, which strip haze without adding aluminium salts to the finished drink.
- Canton flannel and bag shapeCanton flannel is cotton flannel napped on one side; the nap is what catches fines. The paper pulp described here is a disposable filtration layer built inside the conical bag, not a lining you reuse.
- Making the pulpUnsized paper matters: modern glossy or coated stock will not break down into the soft paste described. Untreated blotting paper or a plain paper towel behaves closest to 19th-century filter paper. Run the first flow through until it comes out clear, then discard that runoff and begin collecting.
- The text breaks offThe entry ends mid-sentence in the original. What follows was presumably along the usual lines: once the water has drained through and the pulp has settled into an even bed, the cordial is poured on top without disturbing it.
Manuals like this one were written for the compounder rather than the distiller: a tradesman who bought neutral spirit, essences, sugar and colouring and assembled cordials to order in a back room. In that trade brilliance mattered, because a cloudy bottle read as adulterated, and a great deal of the book is given over to fining, filtration and colour. The techniques overlap with winemaking, where egg-white fining goes back centuries and is still used on red wine in Bordeaux; isinglass and gelatin were common to both cellar and cordial bench. What dates the page most clearly is the alum, a substance that appears in 19th-century recipe books as freely for pickles and bread as for clarifying liquor, and which fell out of use as a bread and liquor additive over the following hundred years.