(_b_) Choose clear weather, and leave the bung out of the cask all night. Fill the bottles, throw sheets of paper over them to keep out the dust, let them stand 24 hours, then cork, wire, and pack away in a cool place. If for immediate use, ripen by adding a piece of sugar to each bottle before corking. _Brightening Cloudy Beer._--Add calcined oyster shells, but after the application of oyster shells the ale requires to be rapidly drunk, as it will not keep good for any length of time. At the time of being brewed, if it is rapidly cooled, it never will become cloudy. All depends upon the time it takes to cool. _Restoring Sour Beer._--When beer has once been sour, i.e. has once been through acetous fermentation, it never again will have its former brilliancy, liveliness, or full flavour; it will always remain acid. Procure a 4½ gal. cask (commonly called a pin), rack the ale into it, and get about 3 oz. of new hops, which put in the pin, bung it down tight, put it in a cellar, where let it remain six months at least; it may then be better. If beer is sour in bottles, put ¼ teaspoonful of soda carbonate and a large teaspoonful of brown sugar into each bottle; then cork well, and tie it down the same as ginger beer, and place the bottles cork downwards for about 3 weeks, where it is not too cold. _Finings._--(_a_) Take 1½ pints water and 2 oz. unslaked lime, mixed well together; let them stand 4 hours, and when the sediment is settled pour it off clear and mix 2 oz. isinglass, cut small, in ½ pint water. When dissolved put it into a barrel of beer. (_b_) Eggs, any quantity; beat them to a froth and expose them to a gentle heat or in the sun to dry; then powder. In some cases a little fine wheat flour is added, the paste made into balls, and dried in the sun or a warm room, and then powdered. (_c_) Isinglass, 1 lb.; water, 8 gal.; vinegar, 4 gal. Mix the vinegar and isinglass, and macerate for 4 days, then add the water. (_d_) Isinglass, 1 lb.; sour beer or cider, 5 gal.; water, 6 gal. Digest the first two until the isinglass is dissolved, then add the water, and strain. _Weevil in Malt._--This can be killed by heat or checked by cold. If the temperature is raised to 167°-190° F., the insects die; if cold air is introduced, they cease to breed. Frequent turning of the malt, careful whitewashing of the walls, and the introduction of cold air (leaving all the windows open for two or three frosty nights) are the best preventives. =Bitters.=--The following are the chief kinds in vogue.