Mar. 24, 1904. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



227 



MAKING AND SELLING HONEY-VINEGAR. 



Pres. York— Some want to hear from Mr. Muth on the 

 manufacture and sale of honey-vinegar. How is it done? 

 And is it profitable? 



■ Dr. Miller— Give us the last answer first and then maybe 

 we won't care to hear the rest. 



Mr. Muth— It pays if we can develop the trade, just 

 like developing a home-trade for your honey. I made four 

 or five barrels of honey-vineear two or three years ago. I 

 told my good wife. "Well, this is pin money for you, and 

 if anybody wants honey-vinegar you can sell it to them at 

 40 cents a gallon." The first barrel we gave away to the 

 neighbors. I told my wife to talk about it. We gave away 

 a barrel of honey-vinegar, the finest in the world. I never 

 had anything like it. Well, I believe some of the neighbors 

 came in for two cents' worth. But I would rather let some- 

 body else develop that trade. Years ago my good father 

 made lots of honey-vinegar. I rei^all on Freeman street. 

 our lot ran down about 140 feet on one street and about 50 

 or 60 on another. We occupied a corner lot. Early in the 

 spring we put out barrels and barrels of honey-water for 

 vinegar, and by August we had the finest vinegar you ever 

 tasted. In those days we had a retail grocery, and th" 

 people were coming and going, and we gave them a sample 

 of honey-vinegar once in a while, and thereby developed a 

 wonderful trade in that line, and it created a trade that took 

 it all for 40 or .35 cents a gallon ; and it also created a trade 

 among the rich nabobs on the hills at 3.S cents a gallon. 

 It can be done if you have the people coming in. I have 

 no retail store. I am a wholesanie man. and people don't 

 come to my store. It can be made, and if I had a little 

 retail store, and had bees where I lived, that would be one 

 of my hobbies. I would knock out a profitable time hav- 

 ing fun making honey-vinegar and selling it at 40 cents a 

 gallon. 



Mr. Wilcox — How much did you put in? 



Mr. Muth — The more honey the better. Put 3 pounds 

 of honey to a gallon of water; or if you put in 2 pounds you 

 will get good vinegar. If you put in 4 pounds you would 

 get the finest on earth; but I would call it about 15 or 20 

 cents a gallon cost. 



Mr. Wheeler: — Did it ever get too sweet? 



Mr. Muth — No, the sweeter you get it the sourer it will 

 get. 



Mr. Wheeler — I have had it stand around in barrels and 

 not ferment. 



Mr. Muth — If you would make your honey-water real 

 sweet, put in a little cake of yeast and it will ferment. 



Mr. France — If, you make it so very sweet it will fer- 

 ment quicker, and be stronger, and it will eat your pickles. 

 The housewife prefers vinegar that is not so strong. 



Mr. Muth — I agree with you. Take about 3 pounds 

 to a gallon, and that's a whole lot. 



Mr. Wheeler — Did you ever try it after your honey was 

 iieated to the boiling point? 



Mr. Muth— I did not. 



Mr. Wheeler — I have had honey, the melting from 

 cappings, the honey gets hot. I have had a great deal that 

 was unfit to sell — water and honey that ran out of the 

 wax-extractor. I have tried all sOrts of ways to get that to 

 sour, except by adding the yeast. I have put in the "mother 

 of vinegar" even. 



Mr. Muth — That ought to work. In the first place, have 

 a vinegar-barrel or a wine-barrel, a barrel that fermentation 

 has gone through. A whisky barrel won't do so well. It 

 should be a vinegar or wine barrel. Bore two holes at the 

 top of the ends. I take a piece of tin for each hole, and 

 punch holes in the tin. Lay that aside until you put the 

 honey-water in. After that is in. put it in a place where it 

 can stand from spring until summer. Then put the honey- 

 water in, and nail on the tins, rough edge up. The reason 

 of that is to keep the little gnats and such things from get- 

 ting into the barrel. That's all there is to be done. Use 

 rain-water ; no well-water. 



Mr. Arndt — How does he clarify the vinegar? I have 

 three or four barrels, and it is not quite in condition to mar- 

 ket, and I have more orders than I can fill. The reason 

 is that my vinegar is not quite sour enough yet, and I have 

 sold out all that was marketable, and there is a demand. 

 I can sell any quantity of vinegar in Chicago. I could go 

 out to every customer and sell 500 gallons of vinegar in two 

 or three months, but it costs so much to put it in jugs and 

 ship. It is the cost of marketing. 



Dr. Miller — How much a gallon? 



Mr. .A.rndt — 50 cents, including the jug. 



Mr. Meredith— The clarifying of vinegar is done by pack- 

 ing a barrel with beech-shavings procured from a vinegar 

 manufacturing company of this city. In connection with their 

 works they have what they call the roller system of the 

 manufacturing of vinegar— the roller presses, where the par- 

 ticles of vinegar or sweetened water come in contact with the 

 air most often. I have also made a German vinegar still, 

 where the air circulates from the bottom, and circulates through 

 as the particles of sweetened water are dropping down, and then 

 a pump brings it to the top, so that I have produced good 

 vinegar from sweetened water in eight days. I think the 

 quick process of making vinegar would be quite a help if_ 

 they want to get into the detail of manufacturing vinegar in 

 a small wav. Take a barrel that will hold 165 gallons of 

 liquid. Pack the shavings, .^rrange the air-vent and the 

 means of distributing the water through. Roll the barrel 

 half over at different intervals, and it continually goes down 

 through the shavings by what is called the quick process 

 of manufacturing vinegar. Here the air goes through the 

 barrel by allowing it to pass through. 



Mr. Arndt — Is vinegar made that way just as good as 

 that which takes two years to make? 



Mr. Meredith — The manufacture of vinegar is the forma- 

 tion of acetic acid due to the changes that the vinegar comes 

 to by the process of coming in contact with the air. Per- 

 haps some others can give more information on that mat- 



Mr. Arndt — My vinegar, altliough it is very sour, they 

 can eat it by the spoonful and it never gags them. 



Mr. York — It is very good vinegar, but most of the 

 honey-vinegar is made in less time than two years. 



Mr. Meredith — Vinegar can be bought in the Chicago 

 market anywhere from 4 to 40 cents a gallon; and if they 

 can manufacture good vinegar for that amount of money 

 there must be some quick process. 



Dr. Miller — Pres. York may be well enough satisfied 

 with Mr. Arndt's vinegar, but Mr. Meredith has given the 

 thing necessary — the exposure of the liquid to the air. When 

 you have a barrel with a hole in it and perhans a bottle in 

 that hole, there is no chance for the air to get at any of 

 that except the surface, and the air is coming in slowly; 

 when it passes down through the shavings there is a very 

 much larger surface. Take that barrel of sweetened water- 

 liquid honey— and put in a small quantity. Put it in a 

 shallow dish and that will sour very much quicker. The 

 change will be much more rapid than if it were in a large 

 body with only a small surface exposed. The shavings are 

 the same thing. Every shaving is a surface when wet with 

 that liquid. There would be, probably, in a barrel of shav- 

 ings. I don't know how many square feet; the same amount 

 would be exposed that there is in a great many barrels in the 

 ordinary way, so that the chemical change can go on very 

 rapidly, and that is all there is to it; and I don't see why 

 the rapid change will be any detriment, and why it wouldn't 

 make just as good vinegar one way as the other. 



Mr. Abbott— The Doctor touched a good idea. If you 

 will set out a small dish it will sour, and take that full of 

 microbes and ready to go to work, and the barrel will sour 

 quicker, too. and the microbes get to work. Get enough 

 started and it will work. 



Mr Duff— And those microbes only get those conditions 

 favorable to growth on account of the temperature. It must 

 be 80 degrees, Fahrenheit. 



Dr. Miller— You cannot sour ice. 



Mr. Duff — You know that. 



Mr. Meredith— x-V vinegar still, in a cheap form, consists 

 of a barrel— you also need a faucet. Fill up one-third full 

 with corn-cobs. Before that there is a hole bored so that 

 the air will pass down, and the liquid from the top would 

 pass down and up without going out. I made mine from 

 shavings of basswood, and filled that up to the top. On top 

 of that was set a tub that had a small hole bored through 

 the bottom, with a string. Tliat was the thing. In the 

 center there is a two-inch tube so as to allow a passage of 

 air to go down through these holes in the side of the bar- 

 rel, and then up through this tube, and charging the still 

 was done by saturating the entire corn-cobs and shavings with 

 cheap vinegar. 



Mr. Abbott — I suppose you all know that the cheapest 

 vinegar is not made by fermentation. The white vinegar 

 isn't vinegar really at all. It is made by a chemical process, 

 and is far inferior to ordinary vinegar made in the family. 



