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The Clarification of Liquids by Fining

liable to become flat and vapid, whether in cask or bot tle. The larger the proportion of "finings" used, the more marked are their injurious effects, and the shorter the interval which elapses before the accession of the several symptoms referred to. We have seen the most disastrous consequences follow the injudicious use of "finings," more especially in respect to those liquors in which a certain amount of piquancy, astringency, and briskness is an essential condition. Wines which "refuse" to "fine" or become clear, when treated with "finings" in the usual manner, are called "stubborn" by wine dealers. The substances employed in the clarification of liquids, operate by either mechanically embracing the feculous matter, and subsiding with it to the bottom of the vessel, or by inducing such a change in its nature or bulk, that it subsides by its own density, in each case, leaving the wine or other liquid transparent. Albumen, gelatine, milk, the acids, certain salts, blood, lime, plaster of Paris, gum arabic, alum, heat, alcohol, etc., serve in many cases for this purpose. The first is used under the form of white of egg, for the clarification of syrups, as it combines with the liquid when cold, but on the application of heat rapidly coagulates and rises to the surface, carrying the impurities with it, forming a scum which is easily removed with a skimmer. It is also much used for fining wines and cordials, particularly the red wines and more limpid cordials. Gelatine, under the form of isinglass, dissolved in water, or some of the liquid to be "fined," is used to fine white wines, cider, beer, and similar liquors, that contain a sufficient quantity of either spirit or astringent (tannin), to induce its precipitation. Fining with isinglass is, as it were, a mechanical process, in this sense, that the isinglass in precipitating forms a