VINEGAR, ACETUM, an agreeable acid and penetrating liquor, prepared from wine, cyder, beer, and others liquors; of considerable use, both as a medicine and a sauce. The word is French, vinaigre; formed from vin, "wine;" and aigre, "sour." See ACETUM and WINE.
Wine and other vinous liquors are said to gain a grateful sharpness, i. e. to become vinegar, by having their salts extracted by insolation or other means, and their sulphurs weakened or depressed.
Others ascribe the conversion of vinous liquors into vinegar, to the grinding or sharpening of the longitudinal particles thereof; by which means they become more sharp and pungent.
The method of making vinegar has long been kept a secret among the people of that profession; who, it is said, oblige themselves to each other by an oath not to reveal it: but notwithstanding this, the Philosophical Transactions, and some other late writings, furnish us with approved accounts thereof.
Method of making Cyder Vinegar.—The cyder (the meanest of which will serve the purpose) is first to be drawn off fine into another vessel, and a quantity of the must of apples to be added: the whole is set in the sun, if there be conveniency for it; and at a week or nine days end it may be drawn off. See CYDER.
Method of making Beer Vinegar.—Take a middling sort of beer, indifferently well hopped; into which, when it has worked well and grown fine, put some rape,
Vinegar. rape, or husks of grapes, usually brought home for that purpose: mash them together in a tub; then letting the rape settle, draw off the liquid part, put it into a cask, and set it in the sun as hot as may be; the bung being only covered with a tile, or slate-stone: and in about 30 or 40 days it will become a good vinegar, and may pass in use as well as that made of wine, if it be refined, and kept from turning muly.
Orthus:—To every gallon of spring-water add three pounds of Malaga raisins; which put into an earthen jar, and place them where they may have the hottest sun from May till Michaelmas; then pressing all well, run the liquor up in a very strong iron-hooped vessel, to prevent its bursting: it will appear very thick and muddy when newly pressed; but will refine in the vessel, and be as clear as wine.—Thus let it remain untouched for three months before it is drawn off, and it will prove excellent vinegar.
To make Wine Vinegar.—Any sort of vinous liquor being mixed with its own feces, flowers, or ferment, and its tartar first reduced to powder; or else with the acid and austere stalks of the vegetable from whence the wine was obtained, which hold a large proportion of tartar; and the whole being kept frequently stirring in a vessel which has formerly held vinegar, or set in a warm place full of the steams of the same, will begin to ferment anew, conceive heat, grow sour by degrees, and soon after turn into vinegar.
The remote subjects of acetous fermentation are the same with those of vinous; but the immediate subjects of it, are all kinds of vegetable juices, after they have once undergone that fermentation which reduces them to wines: for it is absolutely impossible to make vinegar of must, the crude juice of grapes, and other ripe fruits, without the previous assistance of vinous fermentation.
The proper ferments for this operation, whereby vinegar is prepared, are, 1. The feces of all acid wines. 2. The lees of vinegar. 3. Pulverized tartar, especially that of Rhenish wine, or the cream or crystals thereof. 4. Vinegar itself. 5. A wooden vessel well drenched with vinegar, or one that has long been employed to contain it. 6. Wine that has often been mixed with its own feces. 7. The twigs of vines, and the stalks of grapes, currants, cherries, or other vegetables of an acid austere taste. 8. Bakers leaven, after it is turned acid. 9. All manner of ferments, compounded of those already mentioned.
Vinegar is no production of nature, but a creature of art: for verjuice, the juices of citrons, lemons, and the like native acids, are improperly said to be natural vinegars; because, when distilled, they afford nothing but vapid water: whereas it is not the property of vinegar to yield an acid spirit by distillation.
Method of making Vinegar in France.—The French use a method of making vinegar different from that above described.—They take two very large oaken vessels, the larger the better, open at the top; in each whereof they place a wooden grate, within a foot of the bottom; upon these grates they first lay twigs or cuttings of vines, and afterwards the stalks of the branches, without the grapes themselves, or their stones, till the whole pile reaches within a foot of the brim of the vessels; then they fill one of these vessels with wine to the very top, and half fill the other; and with li-
quor drawn out of the full vessel, fill up that which was only half full before; daily repeating the same operation, and pouring the liquor back from one vessel to the other; so that each of them is full and half-full by turns.
When this process has been continued for two or three days, a degree of heat will arise in the vessel which is then but half full, and increase for several days successively, without any appearance of the like in the vessel which happens to be full during those days, the liquor whereof will still remain cool: and as soon as the heat ceases in the vessel that is half full, the vinegar is prepared: which, in the summer, happens on the 14th or 15th day from the beginning; but in the winter, the fermentation proceeds much slower, so that they are obliged to forward it by artificial warmth or the use of stoves.
When the weather is exceeding hot, the liquor ought to be poured off from the full vessel into the other twice a-day; otherwise the liquor would be over-heated, and the fermentation prove too strong: whence the spirituous parts would fly away, and leave a vapid wine instead of vinegar behind.
The full vessel is always to be left open at the top; but the mouth of the other must be closed with a cover of wood, in order the better to keep down and fix the spirit in the body of the liquor; for otherwise it might easily fly off in the heat of fermentation. The vessel that is only half full seems to grow hot rather than the other, because it contains a much greater quantity of the vine-twigs and stalks, than that in proportion to the liquor; above which the pile rising to a considerable height, conceives heat the more, and so conveys it to the wine below.