1897. 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



39 



ed with a thick cloth to keep the 

 gnats and flies away. 



If the vinegar is made during cool 

 weather it is best to keep it in a watm 

 room or in a cellar heated by a fur- 

 nace. This is where we keep ours. 

 But if you have no place in which to 

 keep it warm, and must leave it in a 

 cool place till summer comes again, it 

 will do no harm, but the vinegar will 

 be that much longer in getting made. 



If your vinegar making is made in 

 a warm place in the winter where 

 there is no fear of flies, give it all the 

 air you can. Bear in mind that it 

 takes oxygen both for the alcoholic 

 and for the acetic fermentation, and 

 this oxygen is to be had only in the 

 air. That is why wine makers leave 

 their casks open as long as the alco- 

 holic fermentation lasts in the wines, 

 but take good care to fill up the casks 

 and bung them up tightly before there 

 is any chance for the acetic change. 

 We must, therefore, give our vinegar 

 all the air we can, and if we want to 

 make it rapidly we must transfer it 

 from one vessel to another as often as 

 we can. Vinegar makers pour their 

 vinegar over beach shavings, which 

 assists in airing it and retains much 

 of the lees or sederaeut, but it is not 

 necessary to go to all this trouble for 

 after the fermentation has been well 

 started it will continue with more or 

 less speed according to circumstances, 

 till good vinegar is produced. 



After the alcoholic fermentation has 

 been well started it is easy to induce 

 the acetic fermentation by the addi- 

 tion of sour wine or sour vinegar in a 

 small quantity. We make it a prac- 

 tice to always keep at least two barrels 

 of vinegar, the one sour, the other 

 souring, and we refill the one from the 

 other occasionally. 



If the vinegar, is wanted clear, it 

 must be racked, by removing all but 

 the lees, and the latter need not be 

 thrown away, but may be used with 

 new vinegar to help its formatation. 



Good wine or cider must not be 

 kept in the same cellar with vinegar 

 as the germs of the vinegar floating 

 through the air will induce the acetic 

 fermentation very readily in the 

 former. 



Good vinegar usually contains mill- 

 ions of small animalcules which pre- 

 vent it from having a crystalline ap- 

 pearance. These may be destroyed by 

 heating to 170° and will then settle to 

 the bottom with the lees or dregs. 

 Let it not be supposed, however, that 

 they are injuriousfor millions of these 

 are evidently consumed in every glass 

 full of good vinegar, and one should 

 beware of vinegar that does not con- 

 tain any, for it is probably made of 

 poisonous compounds that kill them. 

 But it is lucky that our house keep- 

 ers do not have eyes gifted with mic- 

 roscopic powers or they would relegate 

 good vinegar out of the domain of the 

 kitchen. 



The writer, at the North American 

 convention, in St, Joseph, Mo., in 

 1894, met a young bee keeper who had 

 tried to make vinegar an(J had suc- 

 ceeded, but said that he had to throw 

 it away because it was full of liitle 

 snakes, which he had detected by 

 holding a very thin vial of the vinegar 

 in the sunlight. It must have un- 

 doubtedly been first class vinegar, and 

 he was very much astonished to hear 

 that he could with difficulty find any 

 good vinegar that did not contain 

 such snakes, unless it had been heated. 



To help strengthen vinegar that is 

 making too slowly, pour it over crush- 



