VINEGAR. The juice of any fruit, especial ly that of the grape and the apple, which, having gone through the vinous fernientation, enters into the acetic fermentation, acquiring a more or less sharp acid taste. All reference to vinegar as a preservative must be understood as being made to a pure cider or wine vinegar. Chemical vinegars, such as are most conimonly found in market, having various chernical properties, naay either entirely fail to effect a preservation, or wholly consume the substance. For a good vinegar, to three gallons of pure apple cider add one gallon of soft water well sweetened with molasses, and expose to the sun or warna air till the acetic fermentation is nearly complete, then remove to a eool dry apartment. The cask should always be left uncorked. Vinegar can be made frorn the juices of ahnost any fruit con taining either starch or sugar. In expressing the juice for any fruit wine the pulp retains a large percentage of starch well adapted to making vine gar. %.A. German method of doing this with un ripe fruit is as follows: They are to be grated, exactly as potatoes are prepared in the manufac ture of starch, and the pulp passed through a moderately fine sieve, or through a coarse and open-meshed cloth. There is, thus, nothing left behind but the pomace pmper, or cellulose, all the starchy matter having been passed through the sieve with the juice. This is next to he di luted with water in proportion to the quantity of starchy matter thus obtained; and the whole is then placed in the clean copper kettle, one or two per cent. of concentrated sulphuric acid be ing added, and heated long enough to transform the starch into grape sugar. The sulphuric acid is to he neutralized by means of carbonate of lime; the gypsum or the sulphate of lime thus produced allowed to settle, and the liquid to be come clear, and then poured off. This liquid is to be left for fermentation to take place, either with or without the use of yeast. A liquid hav ing eight or ten per cent. of sugar can easily be made to liave four or five per cent. of alcohol
after fermentation, which, by its subsequent acidification, will yield vinegar containing five to six per cent. of acetic acid, the usual strength. In the making of commercial vinegar, the basis of the manufacture depends upon alcohol, obtained from starch and sulphuric acid forming starch sugar, from weak alcoholic washes adul terated with sulphuric acid, or from alcohol obtained from the refuse wash of distilleries, or made direct from grain. Thus many years ago, a patent was taken for making vinegar from distillery wash as follows: The substance elaimed is the swill grains or the exhausted liquor of distilleries. In all operations conducted in the large way, and especially where there are chemical processes depending on affinity, mid that again on slight changes, such as strength of the materials, temperature, and other modifying causes, the chemical changes of one stage of the process are rarely completed before another is commenced; and thus more or less material is necessarily lost in all great manufacturing estab lishments. Thus in distilleries which to be profi table rnust be conducted on a large scale, the fermentation of the grain, in order to save the largest amount of alcoholic liquid, is disturbed before the process of ferinentation is completed, and consequently a portion of sugar, of starch. and of dextrine, are left in the waste liquor or swill after distilling. off the alcohol, which, if allowed to ferment again by a moderate tem perature, will soon run into the acetic fermenta tion and vinegar will be produced. Flitherto the swill has been used only for feeding cows and swine; the inventor however, availing himself of the new German, or quick process of making vinegar, has been enabled by devices for separat ing the solid matters which would otherwise clog the apparatus and impede the process, to convert the swill into a vinegar to be used in the manufacture of white lead, sugar of lead, Paris green, and in other salts called acetates.