88 Manufacture and Preservation of Cider and Perry. 
vents the access of air, and also indicates the state of the liquor. 
It is so cheap as to be at the command of everybody, and only 
requires a little attention to keep the water in the cans an inch 
or so above the bottom of the tube. If the supply of water is 
neglected, or if the tube is not properly fixed, the plan necessarily 
fails. The better to secure an air-tight joint, some clay should 
be moulded round the bottom of the tube next the cask. 
The cider should be looked to every morning, when it will be 
easy to detect any case of rapid fermentation, by observing the 
rate at which the bubbles of carbonic-acid gas escape. In such 
case the cider should be immediately racked into a fresh cask, 
the tube and bung being placed in as before. When the old 
system is adopted, and the casks left open, they should be gone 
over every morning, with a lighted candle in the left hand, and 
in the right a stick about a foot long. This stick should be split 
at one end, and about an inch of candle inserted in the cleft. 
This being lit from the candle held in the left hand, is lowered 
to the bunghole of the cask. If the candle goes out, it shows 
that carbonic acid is given off and fermentation is proceeding too 
rapidly ; the cider must then be at once racked into a fresh cask. 
By this means, with ordinary care, any rapid fermentation may 
be immediately detected, and kept under control. Should the 
liquor continue bright and clear till February, I should recom- 
mend that nothing further be done to it ; but should it not be 
bright, it should then be fined with isinglass, &c, in the follow- 
ing manner : 
Take an ounce of isinglass for each hogshead of cider, and 
place it to soak twenty-four hours in some cider or water, then 
beat it up with a whisk until it becomes a thick gelatinous frothy 
fluid ; then rack about half a cask of cider, mix the isinglass 
liquid with a can full of cider, whisk them together, and pour 
into the cask, half filled with cider ; then finish filling the cask 
to within a couple of inches of the top or bunghole. In about a 
week or nine days the cider should be racked off from the isin- 
glass ; and, should it not then be clear, the same process is to be 
repeated. 
In Devonshire they use stewed or baked apples instead of isin- 
glass. A sufficient quantity of large apples are put aside in the 
autumn, and, if the cider is not clear aTaout the middle of January 
or beginning of February some of the apples are baked or stewed, 
then mashed and passed through a sieve to remove the cores, 
rinds, and kernels. They then take about a cjuart of this pulp, 
and apply it in the same way as the isinglass, already described. 
Many consider that it does not impoverish the cider so much as 
isinglass, but rather gives it something to feed upon. This is 
the cheaper process ; I think it is immaterial which is used, so 
