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Finings for Cordials (See Finings for Wines page)
(See Finings for Wines, page 169.) Fining with Isinglass.
Take half an ounce of the best isinglass, and dissolve it over a gentle fire, in a pint of water slightly seasoned with good vinegar, or three teaspoonfuls of lemon juice. Beat it from time to time, adding a little of the seasoned water. When you obtain a complete solution, gradually add the foaming liquid to the cordial, stirring all the while. Then stir for 15 minutes after it is all added, and let it rest for three days; by that time the cordial will be bright and clear. The above quantity is sufficient to clarify 25 gallons of cordial.
This is a working note on clarification rather than a drink in itself: a gelatin-type fining agent prepared in acidified water and stirred into finished cordial to drop haze. The scale is industrial, and everything hinges on keeping the isinglass cool enough to stay intact.
- Do not overheat it"A gentle fire" means barely warm. Isinglass is collagen; held hot it degrades toward ordinary gelatin and loses much of the positive surface charge that makes it pull haze out of suspension. Keep it well below a simmer.
- What isinglass isPurified collagen from the swim bladders of sturgeon and related fish, sold today in sheet or powdered form for beer and wine finings. It is not the mica sheeting also called isinglass in old stove and lantern catalogues, and it is not vegetarian. Brewers' liquid isinglass preparations already come acidified and pre-hydrated.
- The acid is not flavouringThe vinegar or lemon juice lowers the pH so the isinglass hydrates and swells properly. Skip it and you get lumps of undissolved gel that never disperse.
- Scale it downHalf an ounce is about 14 g for 25 gallons, roughly 0.6 g of isinglass per gallon of cordial. For a single gallon that is well under a gram — small enough that home batches are better served by a commercial pre-made isinglass solution measured by the millilitre.
- "Foaming liquid" is a description, not a goalAdd the solution in a thin stream while stirring to disperse it evenly, but do not whip air into the cordial; in an alcoholic infusion aeration costs you aroma.
- Rack after it settlesThe original stops at three days' rest. Once the deposit has formed, siphon the bright cordial off the sediment rather than leaving it sitting on the lees, which will eventually redissolve or be stirred back in.
- It will not fix everythingIsinglass works on tannin and protein haze. Its action falls off at higher alcohol strengths, and cloudiness from essential oils in an anise or peppermint cordial — the familiar louche — is not a haze that fining will remove.
Isinglass reached European cellars through the Russian trade in sturgeon, and the name is generally traced to the Dutch huisenblas, hausen bladder, after the beluga sturgeon whose swim bladder gave the best grade. English brewers had adopted it by the eighteenth century, and by the time this manual was compiled it was the standard fining for beer, wine and sweetened spirits alike, alongside egg white and ox blood. A book like this one was written for the trade rather than the household: a nineteenth-century liquor manufacturer competing on the shelf needed his cordials brilliantly clear, presumably because cloudiness was liable to be read as spoilage or adulteration. That the entry cross-references the wine section and specifies a 25-gallon batch tells you the intended reader owned casks, not bottles.