MAKING CIDER VINEGAR
Every good apple year there are thousands of bushels of apples that go to waste. It doesn't pay to pick and put them into barrels when the price of barrels is more than you can get for the apples. The farmer is the last man to learn how to make use of what ordinarily goes to waste. Nature is lavish always, but wastes nothing. The farmer has learned to be lavish and wasteful too. They say that every part of the pig is utilized in the packing house except the squeal. That is the principle which the farmer will have to live by if he would succeed. What can be done with those wasting apples? Let the boys have them to make into pure cider vinegar. Every one knows how vinegar has been adulterated, and now the law-makers have put their veto on the practice and a penalty to match the crime.
There is nothing very difficult about the physical part of vinegar making. Nature does the hard work but we can aid nature by providing the ideal conditions for making the product we want.
The best apples for making pure cider vinegar are clean, ripe apples. If you use green, dirty, decayed, or over-ripe apples, your vinegar will probably not meet the lawful tests and your time and work will be wasted. Green apples have not enough sugar in them. The same is true of over-ripe apples. "But there isn't much sugar in cider vinegar," you say. No, that is true, but without sugar in the cider you wouldn't get any vinegar. If you were a chemist you could find out just how much sugar was contained in the juice of your apples. Unless the cider has 85 per cent. of sugar it will not make vinegar good enough to satisfy the requirements of the law. However, plenty is found in cider made from sound, ripe apples, and he who makes cider out of anything else deserves to fail.
Expose any fruit juice to the air and it will change. We say, "Oh, that is fermented," and throw it away. But what is this ferment? Set a glass of fresh apple juice in the sun and watch it. In a few days you can actually see that some change is taking place. It is "working," as they say. The sugar is changing to alcohol; so the chemists tell us. What makes it do this? The chemists must answer again. They say that there are yeast plants in the apple juice. How did they get there? We did not put yeast in the apple juice. No, but the air is full of the spores of wild yeast plants so the juice does not have to wait till we put in domesticated yeast from a little "silver" wrapper. As these yeast plants grow they cause the sugar in the juice to change to alcohol. There are lots of other wild spores in the air and in the dirt which collects on the apples if they are left out very long. Some of these spores may be of a kind that would delay the fermentation. For this, if for no better reason, we should wash our cider apples.
In a glass of cider set out in the sun it does not take long for the yeast plants to convert all the sugar to alcohol, because warmth hastens the work. In the barrel set in a cool cellar it takes longer, about six months.
But you have no vinegar yet. You have nothing but "hard" cider which isn't fit for anything. But in the barrel along with the yeast plants are lots of other bacteria, to be seen under the microscope. Among them is a kind that causes alcohol to change to acetic acid. Did you ever pour off the vinegar from a jug and find a mass of jelly-like substance stopping the mouth of the jug? They called it "mother" didn't they? This mother contains great numbers of acetic acid makers and if placed in your barrels will hasten the changes that fit the hard cider for use on the table.
The making of cider vinegar is almost all profit for there is very little outlay for materials and very little work is required. It does take some knowledge of what to do and when. A little study and experience makes success almost certain. A bulletin of the New York State Experiment Station at Geneva gives the following directions, somewhat abbreviated here, for making good cider vinegar at home:
"Use sound ripe apples, picked before they have become dirty or crushed. Observe ordinary precautions to secure cleanliness in grinding and pressing, and use no water. Let the juice stand a few days to settle, then draw off the clear liquid into barrels that have been cleansed and treated with steam or boiling water. Do not fill more than three fourths full. Put a loose plug of cotton into the bung hole. If kept at a temperature of fifty to forty-five degrees Fahr. the alcoholic fermentation will be complete in about six months. This time can be shortened to three months by keeping a temperature of sixty-five to seventy degrees in the storage room and by adding one cake of Fleischmann's compressed yeast dissolved in a little water, to every five gallons of juice. When the cider stops 'working' you will know that the sugar has all been changed to alcohol. The clear liquid should now be drawn off, the barrels rinsed and filled again. To each barrel should now be added from two to four quarts of good vinegar containing some 'mother.' If kept at a temperature of sixty-five to seventy degrees Fahr. the vinegar may be ready for use in six months. If kept very cool it may be two years. When sour enough to be 'just right' the barrels should be filled as full as possible and tightly corked or the sourness may disappear."