Sugar Vinegar.—To make sugar vinegar for domestic use, add I pint of yeast to a solution of If pounds of sugar In I gallon of water. Let the mixture ferment for about three days in a large earthenware jar or other receptade, placed where the temperature will be at least SO° F. Then draw off the dear liquor from the sediment into a clean cask and add I ounce of cream of tartar and I ounce of bruised raisins. Let stand until sufficiently sour, clarify, bottle and cork for use.
Or boil any quantity of coarse brown sugar with filtered rain water at the rate of 0 pounds of sugar to the gallon and with a skimmer re move the scum as fast as it appears. Now add a quart of cold water for every gallon of hot. Let cool, and add about a pint of yeast for each 6 gallons of the liquor. Run into a cask. Cover the bunghole with wire gauze or several thicknesses of cheese cloth, and place it out in the sun. If this vinegar is made in the early spring and exposed to summer heat it will be ready for use by midsum mer. In winter six months vvill be required.
Cider Vinegar.—The best quality of vinegar is undoubtedly that made from cider, providing the apples used are sound, ripe, sweet fruit. As the best grades of cider vinegar bring a fancy price, it is advisable to separate ripe, sweet windfalls from small, un ripe, or defective fruit, and use the best fruit for an A I grade of cider. The usual careless method of making cider is merely to fill a cask to its capacity with cider and let it stand four to six months to sour. But, with proper care and attention, a better grade of cider can be made in a much quicker time. The better way is to place the cider in a hogshead or large tank. Lay the ripening casks, with the bungholes open, on their sides, exposed to the heat of the sun or in a warm cellar, and fill them at first only about a quarter full of cider., After about two weeks, add another quarter, making tbe barrel half full, and after two weeks more do the same, leaving the cask about three quarters full. Thus a consider able flat surface inside is left exposed to the air. Once a day for the first few weeks draw from the spigot a gallon or more of cider and pour it from a considerable height through a funnel into the bunghole. This keeps the cider frill of air. Also, put into each barrel a pound or more of bread dough, prepared as for making ordi nary wheat bread, in the state in which it is ready to be put into the oven.
Other methods recommended for hastening the process of fermentation are the addition of a quart or more of molasses to each cask, 2 ounces of brown sugar to each gallon of cider, or brown paper dipped in New Or leans molasses. But the bread dough
is perhaps to be preferred. The ordinary skunk-cabbage balls, which occur plentifully in swamps and mead ows in many localities, are also em ployed for this purpose.
Or the mother of vinegar from an old cider barrel will greatly hasten the process.
Cheap Cider Vinegar.— Save tbe pomace from which cider is made, or buy pomace from the cider mill. Put it into tight casks or hogsheads with the head knocked out of one end and a spigot near the bottom, and cover with filtered rain water. Tack over the top two or three thicknesses of cheese cloth to keep out insects and dust. Draw off the liquor from the bottom as fast as it ferments, and use it to dilute pure cider. Thus nearly two barrels of vinegar can be made from one of cider.
To Make Cider Vinegar Quickly. —Fill a jar or jug with cider and add for each gallon of cider a pint of New Orleans molasses and a cup ful of good yeast. Take out the cork of the jug or leave the cover of the jar tilted slightly to admit the air.
The cider will commence to ferment at once and will be turned into vine gar in about a week. Pour off the clear into demijohns or bottles and cork tightly for use. Leave the lees or mother, and fill up the original re ceptacle with fresh cider to repeat the process.
To Preserve Vinegar.—To preserve vinegar after it has ripened to per fection, draw it off from the mother into a clean cask and drive in the bung to exclude the air.
Or clarify and bottle it in tightly stoppered bottles and store at a low temperature. If it again thickens and shows traces of mother, it must be once more drawn off into a clean vessel.
Grape Vinegar.—The juice of the grapes must first be extracted in a wine press and allowed to ferment. Wine when et year old usually fur nishes the best vinegar, as with great er age the wine loses a part of its organic matter and becomes unsuita ble for vinegar. To make vinegar from vvine it is first poured into cask containing wine lees. It is then placed in cloth sacks in an ironbound vat or cask and squeezed through the cloth by means of weights from above. It is then placed in upright casks having a bunghole at the top and allowed to sour, same as cider vinegar. If casks are exposed to the summer sun, the contents turn to vinegar in about two weeks. But in winter the process in warm room requires a month or more. The tem perature should be 75° to 86° F. The wine is next drawn off into barrels containing beech-wood chips, to clar ify for about two weeks. It is then ready for use. The original cask, containing the residue of mother, is used without cleansing to ferment additional wine.