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Vinegar, Pickles, and Pickling: Cider
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, unripe, or defective fruit, and use the best fruit for an A 1 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 the barrel half full, and after two weeks more do the same, leaving the cask about three quarters full. Thus a considerable 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 full of air. Also, put into each barrel a pound or more of bread dough, prepared as for making ordinary wheat bread, in the state in which it is ready to be put into the oven.
This is a two-stage ferment described as one: sweet cider must first go to hard cider (yeast, sugar to alcohol) before acetic bacteria can turn the alcohol to acid. The instructions assume you already know that, and assume barrels most people no longer own.
- The vessel, translatedA hogshead is roughly 63 gallons and a standard barrel about 31; the "ripening casks" here are barrels laid on their side, bung up, so a wide surface of liquid meets the air. In a modern kitchen the nearest equivalent is a wide-mouthed gallon jar or crock left well under half full, though an upright jar will not match a cask-on-its-side for exposed surface.
- The hinge: air, not sugarEverything in this method exists to feed oxygen to Acetobacter, which cannot work without it. The open bunghole, the quarter-full cask, and the daily pouring from a height through a funnel are all aeration. If you seal the vessel you get flat, alcoholic cider that never sours.
- Cover the openingThe original leaves bungholes open. Cover the mouth with cheesecloth or a coffee filter under a band. It admits air but keeps out vinegar flies, which are the usual reason a promising crock turns cloudy and foul.
- Cider that will actually fermentSupermarket apple juice treated with potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate will not ferment at all. Use unpasteurized cider from a mill, or pasteurized cider with no preservatives listed. Sulfited cider needs to stand open a day or two first.
- The bread doughThe pound of raw bread dough is a yeast starter, supplying Saccharomyces and a little nutrient to convert the sugar to alcohol. Modern practice uses a packet of wine or ale yeast for that stage, then a few ounces of raw unfiltered vinegar or a piece of "mother" to seed the acetic stage.
- TemperatureThe book gives no figure; "the heat of the sun or a warm cellar" indicates only a warm spot, and a cellar would generally have been cooler than ideal. Acetic bacteria work fastest somewhere around 80-85F; below about 60F the process stalls for months, and above about 90F the mother tends to die back. Direct summer sun on a glass jar overshoots easily, so a warm dark corner is safer.
- Timing and finishingThe staged additions as written run about four weeks: a quarter to start, another quarter after two weeks, a third after two weeks more. The text gives no figure for full souring, claiming only that it is "much quicker" than the four to six months of the "careless" barrel. It is done when it smells sharp and tastes no longer sweet or alcoholic; strain, bottle, and pasteurize at 140-150F if you want to stop it developing further.
- Before you pickle with itHomemade vinegar is of unknown strength, and safe pickling and canning depend on at least 5 percent acetic acid. Use it for dressings and for table vinegar; for any preserving recipe use commercial vinegar of a stated strength, or test the acidity with a titration kit.
Cider vinegar was farm infrastructure before it was a health-food shelf item: an orchard produced far more fruit than a household could eat or store, windfalls bruised and would not keep, and pressing them cost nothing but labor. What the press could not sell as sweet cider went to hard cider, and what soured went to vinegar, which in turn preserved the cucumbers, beets and cabbage that carried a household through winter. The grading language here — separating sound ripe windfalls for "an A 1 grade" and relegating the small and defective fruit — reflects a period when good cider vinegar genuinely did "bring a fancy price" against the cheap distilled and wood-derived vinegars that had been on the market since the mid-nineteenth century. Household Discoveries, published in the first decade of the twentieth century, sits at the end of that tradition, addressing readers who still had a cellar and a barrel but were beginning to be able to buy vinegar by the bottle.