FININGS FOR WINES.
If wine does not become clear soon enough, for each forty gallons dissolve an ounce of isinglass in a quart of water. Strain and mix this with part of the liquor, beat it up to a froth, and pour it into the rest; stir the whole well, and bung it up, except there should be an appearance of fermentation; if so, leave the bung out till it has ceased. Instead of isinglass, some use hartshorn shavings, in rather larger quantities; red wines are fined with eggs, twelve to the pipe, beaten up to a froth, mixed with the wine, and well stirred in.
Gypsum or alabaster is used to clear cloudy white wines; as also fresh slaked lime; and the size of a walnut of sugar of lead, with a table spoonful of sal enixum, is put to forty gallons of muddy wine, to clear it; and hence, as the sugar of lead is decomposed, and changed into an insoluble sulphat of lead, which falls to the bottom, the practice is not so dangerous as has been represented.