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SUGAR VINEGAR (another way)
To every gallon of water add two pounds of brown sugar and a little yeast. Have it exposed to the sun for six months in a vessel lightly stopped.
A two-stage ferment compressed into two sentences: yeast turns the sugar to alcohol, then airborne Acetobacter turns the alcohol to acetic acid. Everything that matters is in what the recipe leaves out.
- The hinge: air, but not insects"Lightly stopped" means the vessel must breathe — acetification is aerobic and a sealed jar will stall at alcohol. Cover the mouth with muslin under a rubber band rather than a loose cork, or you will be fermenting fruit flies as well.
- QuantitiesTwo pounds of brown sugar to a gallon of water is roughly 900 g to 4.5 litres (the imperial gallon), around 200 g of sugar per litre and so on the order of 10 to 12 per cent potential alcohol. That is at the strong end for acetification; acetic bacteria are inhibited above roughly 10 per cent, so a batch made to this strength may need diluting before it will sour reliably.
- "A little yeast"In this period that would most likely have been brewer's barm or compressed yeast, a live slurry rather than a dried granule. A quarter-teaspoon of dried wine or ale yeast per gallon does the same work. Bread yeast will function but can leave a doughy note.
- What the recipe never mentionsThere is no vinegar starter here — the book assumes a kitchen full of resident acetic bacteria. Add a few tablespoons of unpasteurised raw vinegar, or a piece of mother, once the alcoholic ferment has finished bubbling, or the batch may go mouldy instead of sour.
- Six months in the sunDirect sun is the period's way of holding a warm temperature, not a requirement. Acetobacter works best at 25-30C in the dark; strong sunlight heats the surface unevenly and bleaches the result. A warm cupboard for two to three months usually gets there.
- Judging when it is doneThe original gives no test. Smell for a clean sharp acidity with no trace of nail-polish or solvent, then bottle and cap tightly to stop further oxidation, which eventually degrades the acid.
- Do not use it for canning or pickling for storageHome vinegar of unmeasured strength can be well under the 5 per cent acetic acid that shelf-stable pickles require. Use it for dressings, sauces and refrigerator pickles, and buy commercial vinegar for anything sealed in a jar for the pantry.
- YieldAbout a gallon, less whatever is lost to evaporation over a long warm ferment.
Sugar vinegar belongs to a family of household vinegars — from beer dregs, cider, gooseberries, raisins, spoiled wine — that were standard where the kitchen produced its own condiments rather than buying them. Vinegar was infrastructure: it preserved, it pickled, it went into sauces, mint sauce, salad dressing and countless made dishes, and running out was a real inconvenience. Sugar and water gave a vinegar with no fruit character, useful precisely because it tasted of nothing in particular, though brown sugar will carry its own colour and a trace of molasses into the result. The instruction to set the vessel in the sun for six months reflects a period before controlled warm storage, and the timescale assumes a household with somewhere out of the way to leave a crock alone until autumn.