If the wine be not fine enough, draw off a quart, in which dissolve isinglass in the proportion of half an ounce to twenty gallons, and pour the solution in at the bung-hole. In about three weeks, the liquor will be sufficiently clear for bottling.
In drawing off, be careful to tap the cask above the lees. The wine, to be fit for bottling, should be fine and brilliant, else it will never brighten after. When bottled, it should be stored in a cool cellar, and the bottles laid on their sides, and in sawdust; but, on no account set upright.
In making wines, it is a good plan to use two casks, one a very small one, from which the larger one may be filled up, during the fermentation.
1238. Fining for Wine.—Put an ounce of isinglass into a quart jug, with one pint of wine; stir it twice or thrice a day, and it will soon dissolve; when strain it through a sieve. A pint of this fining will be sufficient for a cask of twenty gallons.
When the fining is put into the cask, stir it up with a stick, taking care not to touch the bottom, so as to disturb the lees. Fill up the cask, if necessary, bung it down, and in a week the wine will be fit for bottling.
For white wine only, add and mix, as above, a quarter of a pint of milk to every gallon of wine. It may also be fined with the whites of eggs, beaten up with some wine, in the proportion of four whites to sixteen gallons of wine.
1239. To sweeten Casks.—If a cask, after the contents are drunk out, be well stopped, and the lees be allowed to remain in it till it is again to be used, it will only be necessary to scald it; taking care, before you fill it, to see that the hoops are well driven. Should the air get into the cask, it will become musty, and scalding will not improve it; the surest way will be then to take out the head of the cask, to be shaved, then to burn it a little, and scald it for use. Or, put into the cask some quick lime and cold water, bung it down, shake it for some time, and then scald it; or, burn a match in it, and scald it.
Or, mix half a pint of the strongest sulphuric acid in an open vessel, with a quart of water, put it into the cask, and roll it well about; next day, add one pound of chalk, bung it down, and in three or four days the cask should be washed out with boiling water.