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Vinegar, Pickles, and Pickling: Pour

The cider will commence to ferment at once and will be turned into vinegar 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 receptacle with fresh cider to repeat the process.

To Preserve Vinegar.- To preserve vinegar after it has ripened to perfection, 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. after which the wine is gradually added at the rate of about a gallon at a time until the casks are filled.

After about two or three weeks the wine is turned to vinegar. One half is then drawn off and bottled or stored for use, and the cask is refilled as before. This process is sometimes continued for ten years, without the casks ever becoming more than half empty, but after that length of time it is necessary to remove the accumulated sediment.

White-Wine Vinegar. - Crush 2 pounds of clean juicy raisins. Add a gallon of filtered rain water, place in a 2-gallon jug uncorked, and let it stand in a warm place. In about a month it will be converted into pure white-wine vinegar.

Pour out the clear vinegar through a cheese-cloth strainer, leaving the raisins and sediment in the jug; add pound of raisins in another gallon of water, and repeat the process.

Grape Vinegar. The juice of the grapes must first be extracted in a wine press and allowed to ferment.

Wine when a year old usually furnishes the best vinegar, as with greater age the wine loses a part of its organic matter and becomes unsuitable for vinegar. To make vinegar from wine it is first poured into a 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 a warm room requires a month or more. The temperature should be 75° to 86° F. The wine is next drawn off into barrels containing beech-wood chips, to clarify 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.

In making the best qualities of vinegar the wine is first clarified by running it into casks or vats containing beech shavings. The ripening casks are then filled about a quarter full of boiling vinegar, which is allowed to stand for three or four days, Corn Vinegar.-Boil in a gallon of rain water a pint of shelled Indian corn until the kernels burst. Pour the whole into a 2-gallon stone jug and add filtered rain water to supply that lost by evaporation, making a gallon all told. Dissolve pound of granulated sugar in pound of soft water by bringing it to a boil. Pour into the jug; shake well. Cover the mouth of the jug with two or three thicknesses of cheese cloth. Let stand in a warm place at a temperature of 75° or 80° F. It will be converted into vinegar in about a month. Pour off this vinegar into another jug, leaving about half the mother, and repeat the process.

To preserve this vinegar, cover the mouth of the jug with a piece of cloth and store it in a dry, warm place. This recipe makes vinegar about as cheaply as it can be made, and gives a quality that is preferred by many to ordinary cider vinegar.

It is worth trying.